Climate Change Bill [Lords]

Public Bill Committee, 26 June 2008.

Clause 2

Nick Hurd (Conservative, Ruislip - Northwood)

On behalf of the Committee, may I welcome you to the Chair, Mr. Atkinson? You join a lively debate on what we might call the 80/60 issue. Personally, I regret the way in which this issue has been allowed to become totemic in relation to the Bill, because in my view the most important target, and the political prize at the moment, is the 2020 target—the interim target.

If we are serious about meeting the 2° C threshold, my understanding of the science tells me that it is critical that we stabilise concentrations of greenhouse gases at around 450 parts per million. Given that we are at 380 ppm and rising at 2 ppm every year, it seems to me that we face an enormous challenge. The only way in which we can achieve that target is through some form of peak and decline framework. On the science that I have seen, we need global emissions to peak in a framework of around 15 to 20 years. Given that we are on a trajectory to fail in that task, the political energy of this Committee should be focused on the 2020 target and the credibility of the policy framework that underpins it. The 2050 target is, of course, important, because it sets a direction of travel and trajectory for carbon budgets, which are the key innovation in this Bill.

The dividing lines of that debate, the importance of which I do not want to understate, are now clear, and amendment No. 2 is supported by two esteemed members of the Environmental Audit Committee, who are clearly extremely sincere in their view. The Liberal Democrats, who carry conviction on this subject, also support the amendment, and I believe that they also see some political advantage in their position. The Conservative party position is that a great deal of sympathy has been expressed for the principles behind the amendment, but, for reasons that have been very adequately expressed by my hon. Friends, we would prefer to see leadership on this issue from the independent Climate Change Committee, and we have placed on record our commitment to uphold the recommendation of any such committee. The Government’s position is broadly in line with that, with one very big caveat: the Minister has placed on record that a Labour Government will not feel under any obligation to follow the recommendation of the independent Climate Change Committee—that was when the Minister’s said no on Second Reading. Those are the key dividing lines in the debate.

For the record, I am an “at least 80 per cent.” man. I placed that view on the record in December 2006 in a paper that I co-authored for the quality of life policy group, which was so ably chaired by my right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk, Coastal. That report was called “Don’t give up on 2° C”, and it made it clear that we should be thinking about at least 80 per cent. That was the view that guided the work of the quality of life policy group. All the evidence that I have heard in the Environmental Audit Committee and in the Joint Committee that scrutinised this draft Bill has served to reinforce that view.

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Northavon)

Good morning to you, Mr. Atkinson. I agree with the hon. Gentleman’s analysis of the debate so far, but as an 80 per cent. man—I have no doubt about his sincerity on that point—does he accept the inherent risk in the Conservative position? Given what he has said about the Government’s position and an election not happening for another two years, there is the risk that a 60 per cent. target will be used. Why should we risk a 60 per cent. target, given that we are going to ask the Climate Change Committee for its opinion anyway? Why not have 80 per cent. in the Bill as an insurance policy?

Nick Hurd (Conservative, Ruislip - Northwood)

The hon. Gentleman and other supporters of 80 per cent. continue to ignore two very important words in the Bill, which are “at least.” I touch on the importance of those two words, because they mean something to me. I would be amazed if the independent Climate Change Committee were to reach any conclusion after examining the evidence other than that 60 per cent. is inadequate. Therefore I have a great deal of confidence that an independent committee will come forward with that view, which, as has been pointed out, goes with the grain of the international movement in California and Germany.

In my view and that of my party, there is a great deal of value in having that position validated and challenged by an independent Climate Change Committee of experts, because the background to the Bill is the damaged credibility of the political process in setting and meeting targets, and we must respect that point. For me, the whole value of the Bill lies in the word “accountability”, which means a much better process for setting and revising targets and for holding the Government of the day accountable for those targets. The lack of accountability has undermined the current process. For me, that is the whole value of the Bill.

In that context, the independent Climate Change Committee is a key innovation. It will be extremely helpful for that committee to be seen to take the lead in proposing a target or a shift in a target, which would—we must be honest about this—have significant economic implications. Because our political process has been devalued, there will be tremendous value in the committee, if it is independent. I spent many months scrutinising the Bill in the Environmental Audit Committee and the Joint Committee, and I could ally myself with the Government’s position, if I felt confident that they genuinely believe in the independence of the committee and that they genuinely believe that the committee should have teeth.

John Gummer (Conservative, Suffolk Coastal)

Does my hon. Friend agree that we share two views? First, the figure will have to be 80-plus per cent.; secondly, that figure is best decided by the committee, not least because that will guarantee the way in which we are going to proceed. The problem is that it looks as though the Government cannot give us the assurance that they will treat the committee properly. It is a question of not only that decision, but all decisions. If that decision cannot be left to the committee, then what other decisions could be? I am afraid the Government are pushing me towards the position of saying that in these circumstances it is better to have the 80 per cent. target in the Bill than not at all. I do not want to do that, because the alternative is better. The Government seem to be snatching defeat from the jaws of victory in the most remarkable manner.

Nick Hurd (Conservative, Ruislip - Northwood)

I have a great deal of sympathy with my right hon. Friend’s point. We were both reasonably comfortable with the Government’s position when we came to the Committee, if there was a genuine sense that the committee was to have bite. Early signs were encouraging in terms of the appointment of the chairman of the committee. Adair Turner was an extremely good choice, and it is a source of great concern that he has decided to move on so quickly.

Linda Gilroy (Labour, Plymouth, Sutton)

Has the hon. Gentleman had the opportunity to look at the oral evidence on the independent Committee on Climate Change given to the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee on 26 March? At that time, Adair Turner himself said that

“you cannot have a body for climate change which is given complete independence in pursuing a target”.

Nick Hurd (Conservative, Ruislip - Northwood)

I have not seen that evidence, but that is a perfectly sensible remark. There is no dispute that the final decision must rest with Parliament, which is accountable to the people. There are degrees of independence: we need an independent Climate Change Committee that can make life tough for the Government, but that is not to say that it should be ultimately responsible for setting targets. It is a question of the degree to which the committee can make life tough, and the degree to which the Government of the day feel obliged to accept its recommendation. That is where there are gaps between us.

John Gummer (Conservative, Suffolk Coastal)

Does my hon. Friend agree that the situation is different, because the Government said to those who want 80 per cent. that it would be better if the committee decided the target? The Government indicated that that was not in to water down the target, but to get the decision made in a more sensible way.

If the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton remembers the words that she has just quoted, why on earth did she vote yesterday for Parliament to lose all control over the planning system? It is really two-faced to say what she has said.

Nick Hurd (Conservative, Ruislip - Northwood)

I will leave my right hon. Friend and the hon. Lady to sort that out between themselves.

The Minister has picked up the Opposition’s genuine concerns about his reply to a question from my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury on Second Reading. The Opposition have already said that we will accept the recommendation of the independent Climate Change Committee in relation to the key target. We do not think that we should be overly prescriptive about the level at this stage, because, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk, Coastal has argued, that would undermine the authority and credibility of the Committee at a crucial stage. The words “at least” are very important. I will listen very carefully to what the Minister says in relation to the Government’s attitude to any recommendation from the committee. If the Minister continues to pursue the no, no, no line, which has not served previous political leaders too well, I suspect that he will have a problem with Opposition Members.

Alan Whitehead (Labour, Southampton, Test)

I have been listening very carefully, and I must confess that I am puzzled. On the one hand, it has been suggested that the Committee on Climate Change should not be a wholly freestanding body, with no relation to anybody else, while on the other my hon. Friend the Minister is being berated for suggesting that the committee should have that particular arrangement attached to it. My puzzlement is increased by the fact that in both the draft Bill and the Bill as it came out of the House of Lords, there is a clause—it is clause 20 in the draft Bill—with the heading:

“Advice in connection with carbon budgets”.

The clause states:

“It is the duty of the Committee to advise the Secretary of State”.

That draft clause is clause 34 in the Bill that is before us today. The heading states:

“Advice in connection with carbon budgets”,

and the clause states that

“It is the duty of the Committee to advise the Secretary of State”.

In other words, the wording is identical. No one sought to amend the clause during the pre-legislative scrutiny or the Bill’s passage through the House of Lords. I also note that the right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal has not tabled amendments to clause 34 suggesting that that committee should be other than it was always intended to be, which is an advisory committee.

I have a straightforward, common-sense understanding of the word “advisory”, namely that the committee advises. To enable a committee to command, the wording would have to be different. For the committee to be required metaphorically to make an offer that cannot be refused would not be an appropriate way to legislate as far as Parliament is concerned. It is clear that the committee has an advisory role.

A moment ago, the hon. Member for Ruislip-Northwood clearly indicated that that is his view of the committee, which is at odds with the view expressed by the right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal, who appeared to insist on the idea that the committee should not have that function. When the Minister was asked the question on Second Reading, he gave the only answer he could given where the Bill stood. The Bill was not unformed on Second Reading, because it had already been discussed and scrutinised in the House of Lords before coming to this House on Second Reading.

When the Minister was asked whether there were any circumstances in which he could envisage the considerations of the Committee on Climate Change not being implemented, the only possible answer without doing injustice to this Bill was no. One may say that that was a blunt answer. Although my hon. Friend the Minister is known for his straightforwardness and bluntness, his answer was not only the correct answer but the only one that could have been given. The question could have been phrased differently. For example, if he had been asked about circumstances in which, given the terms of the relationship between the committee and the Government and the committee’s responsibilities, the Government could not easily take the committee’s advice, particularly with regard to whether the target should be at least 60 per cent. or 80 per cent., I suspect that he would have provided an extended response.

It is specious to make a great point about the Minister’s reply on Second Reading when the record states that it was the only thing that could have been said under the circumstances. I hope, therefore, that that avenue will not be followed, as it is not a serious point about a process which I think everybody here agrees will almost certainly result in an increase from at least 60 per cent. to 80 per cent.

Tony Baldry (Conservative, Banbury)

I find the hon. Gentleman’s point incomprehensible. I do not want to delay the Committee, but could he please take us through it again? With all due respect, the first point was totally nonsensical. I want to concentrate on what he is saying. Could he take us through the logic of his argument again? It sounded like complete nonsense.

Alan Whitehead (Labour, Southampton, Test)

I am somewhat dismayed that my attempt to elucidate matters was not followed in the way that I had hoped. For clarification, clause 20 of the draft Bill, which has the heading,

“Advice in connection with carbon budgets”,

describes a function of the Committee on Climate Change:

“It is the duty of the Committee to advise the Secretary of State, in relation to each budgetary period”.

That clause has been transposed in the current Bill to clause 34, which has exactly the same wording. At no stage in the proceedings has anyone sought to amend it, and there is no amendment on the amendment paper today to suggest that that function should be changed.

Gregory Barker (Conservative, Bexhill and Battle)

With respect, no one is disputing that it is the duty of the committee to advise the Government. The Opposition question whether the Government will heed the advice. From what they said, it was always our clear assumption that they would do so, but in the Chamber and in Committee to date there has been some equivocation, which is giving rise to concerns that the Government may not heed the advice in full.

Alan Whitehead (Labour, Southampton, Test)

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention, as it shows progress in understanding the point. It anticipated the second part of my 10-peso version of the explanation, which is that if it were considered that any function other than an advisory function for the committee should to be placed in the Bill, someone at some stage should have tabled an amendment to illustrate that. That has not happened and no such amendment is before the Committee now.

Gregory Barker (Conservative, Bexhill and Battle)

I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman is deliberately obfuscating. What the official Opposition are saying is clear. We are not disputing that the role of the committee should be advisory. We are saying that the Conservative party in government would implement the advice in full. What we have heard from the Government Front Bench to date—I hope the Minister will clarify this—is equivocation as to whether his Government would implement the advice in full. We are looking for a clear promise from those on the Government Front Bench that they will implement the advice in full. We are not trying to change the terms of the Bill.

Alan Whitehead (Labour, Southampton, Test)

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that point, which is consistent with what I am about to say. If the committee is, indeed, advisory, it would be an abuse of the English language to say that its advice must be taken under all circumstances. Therefore, on the question whether the Government must under all circumstances take the advice of the committee, the answer logically—not to abuse the English language—must be no.

If the question were whether the Minister can easily envisage circumstances in which the committee’s advice relating to a change from a 60 per cent. minimum to 80 per cent. would not be taken, I am certain that a different answer would be given. However, a debating point cannot be made of the fact that, as the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle said, the committee is advisory. Unless Opposition Members wish to change that status, the answer to the general question about the committee’s advice always has to be no. There is no logical escape from that position.

John Gummer (Conservative, Suffolk Coastal)

Does the hon. Gentleman accept that the Minister is a very intelligent member of the Government—some of us would say one of the most intelligent? When asked such an important question, he is perfectly capable of saying, “This is an advisory committee. I can assure the Committee that on this point, which lies at the heart of the committee’s remit, we cannot think of circumstances in which we would not accept its advice.” However, he did not say that. He said no. It is insulting to him to suggest that he cannot understand the point made so laboriously by the hon. Member for Southampton, Test. If the Minister is now willing to say, “I can conceive of no circumstances in which I would not accept the advice”, I would take that to be as near to a yes as is possible. Unless he can say that, however, his no is a serious no, because he is a serious man.

Alan Whitehead (Labour, Southampton, Test)

The right hon. Gentleman cannot have it both ways—[Interruption.] I accept the conditional validity of that statement about the right hon. Gentleman. If the Minister is asked a straight question, he will give a straight answer, but he was not asked such a question. That is my point. Why does the right hon. Gentleman not try asking him a straight question? He might find the outcome interesting.

Tony Baldry (Conservative, Banbury)

Perhaps the hon. Gentleman can help me. Is this a Whip’s brief, or is he an 80 per cent. man? If the former is the case, I know that I can ignore it, but if the latter, he is working hard to persuade me not to support the amendment tabled by the hon. Member for Bury, North, which I was previously minded to support. Will he explain where he is hoping to take us at the end of the argument?

Alan Whitehead (Labour, Southampton, Test)

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that interesting intervention. I assure him that this is all my own work, based on my understanding of the present Bill, the original Bill, amendments to it and how statements should be interpreted in that context. I trust that he will take that at face value. I invite the Committee to reflect on what the Bill says, as opposed to what people might like it to say about how its provisions will work.

Anne McIntosh (Conservative, Vale of York)

I welcome you to the Chair, Mr. Atkinson. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. We have had an interesting debate, and it is getting more interesting.

On clause 2, my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle clearly stated our position, which is that we look to a strong and independent Committee on Climate Change. It is empowered to make recommendations on the basis of science, not politics, which is why we argued in another place for the committee to be empowered to review the 2050 target and to report to the Secretary of State before the first five-year carbon budget is set. My hon. Friend said that we would be wedded to the advice handed down by the committee. Of course, nothing in the Bill prevents deeper cuts or more ambitious targets in future.

Will the Minister consider a question that has not been raised so far? Clause 2(2) reads:

“‘The 1990 baseline’ means the amount of net UK emissions of targeted greenhouse gases for the year 1990.”

Would he be minded to seek advice from the Committee on Climate Change on extending the list of recognised greenhouse gases? Will that be one of the first things that the Government ask it to do?

During the debate, there was much discussion about public scepticism. It is important that we carry the public with us. The Minister has been kind enough to correspond with me on a number of constituency cases, to which I shall refer later. This is a good opportunity to thank him for being so assiduous in his work, as it is an enormous help when he responds fully.

Constituents and the public generally want to tackle climate change, but they do not want to do so personally. They believe that someone else will tackle it. With regard to the debate today on wind farms and where they should be placed, our problem in north Yorkshire is that most of the pylons connecting wind farms to the national grid come through our territory, and we would much rather they went through someone else’s. It is often the case that we want to battle climate change in principle, but we would rather someone else took the pain.

I would like to raise with the Minister some of the points that he was good enough to set out in his letter of unspecified date in June, which I received this week, in response to the concerns of my constituent Mr. Colin Inglis about the Bill and in particular early-day motion 736.

I am trying to help the Minister because, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle said, we believe that he may be prevaricating. Obviously, the Minister might like some wriggle room, but it is important, particularly in the context of the debate on the amendment and clause 2—the 60 or 80 per cent. debate—to pin him down. He helpfully writes:

“The Prime Minister has already stated that evidence now suggests that developed countries may have to reduce their emissions by up to 80 per cent. if we are to have an effective international agreement to tackle climate change.”

There is no argument there. The Minister continues, equally helpfully:

“The Government is therefore asking the new independent, expert Committee on Climate Change to carry out a review of the 2050 target and, as we announced on 18 February, the Government has proposed making this review a statutory duty under the Bill.”

He goes on:

“Before taking any decision, we need to properly understand the implications, costs and benefits of different options. For example what would be the economic costs and benefits of different levels of the 2050 target?”

I shall focus on the costs and benefits and try to get some information from the Minister about the cost implications.

The Minister continues:

“How would this be affected if the rest of the world was also taking meaningful action to tackle climate change, or if the UK was going it alone?”

To me, this is the key passage and the Government’s commitment:

“This is why we have asked the Committee on Climate Change to review the 2050 target, and advise on whether it should be tightened up to 80 per cent.”

The Minister states:

“I agree on the need for an urgent decision, which is why the review will be one of the Committee's first tasks, alongside its work on advising on the first three carbon budgets.”

The Minister is keen for a decision. Is he saying that the Secretary of State will take a decision on the basis of the advice from the Committee on Climate Change, and that, assuming the advice is in favour of 80 per cent., the Minister will accept it? He has committed himself to taking a decision. I am trying to clarify, on behalf of Mr. Inglis and the Committee, the basis on which the Minister or the Government would not take that advice. Would it be on the basis of alternative scientific evidence? Presumably, if the Government are committing the Committee on Climate Change to undertake the review—the Minister said that that is why they are setting up the Committee—they will have access to the greatest expertise.

The Minister goes on to say:

“We are keen to get the first three budgets in place as quickly as possible in order to ensure that there are binding constraints on UK emissions which inform investment decisions now.”

Going forward, we must recognise those who are going to take the hit, especially in the business community. A York brick company in my constituency has been badly affected by the climate change levy, and I am sure that it will take a big hit, whether there is a 60 per cent. or 80 per cent. reduction. We owe it to businesses in this country to say what we think the target will be and to give them enough time to prepare for alternatives.

Turning to the final impact assessment of April 2008, will the Minister clarify on what basis the Government are proceeding with their thinking about the advice that they will receive from the committee? The impact assessment states:

“The Stern Review concluded that, based on an extensive review of the current literature, the long run costs of global action”,

assuming that there were concentrations of 550 ppm carbon dioxide, would be

“around 1 per cent. of GDP by 2050, within a range of +/-3 per cent.”

That is obviously quite a big leverage. Paragraph 2.1.7 of the impact assessment says:

“It is possible to calculate the present value of the cumulative cost of reducing emissions by 60 per cent. by 2050.”

It states that the reduction in GDP would be between 0.3 per cent. and 1.5 per cent. in 2050, which would be

“in the order of £30 to £205 billion.”

Does the Minister still stand by that assessment?

Turning to the costs of the higher target, page 16 of that assessment states:

“Under an 80 per cent. reduction scenario, costs have been estimated to be between 1.1 per cent. to 2.6 per cent. of GDP in 2050, depending on the assumed level of future technological change, fossil fuel prices and availability of particular technologies.”

My understanding is that the actual range of the costs to businesses within the context of the impact assessment, whether we have a 60 per cent. or an 80 per cent. target, is very small. Does not the Minister think that it would be fair to give businesses the longest possible lead-in time that they could have?

Martin Horwood (Liberal Democrat, Cheltenham)

I am struggling to understand the logic of the hon. Lady’s position. She seems to be saying that the committee’s advice should be binding on the Government and that they must always take its advice. She seems to be not only contradicting an amendment that she has tabled to clause 4, which is about the mechanism by which the Government can disagree on occasion with the committee, but, by asking the Minister to take a view on the impact assessment, she is asking him to take a view on the circumstances in which different issues might be measured regarding whether to take the committee’s advice. In a sense, is that not irrelevant if the committee’s advice is always to be treated to as binding?

Anne McIntosh (Conservative, Vale of York)

I am trying to understand the Minister’s thought process. It would be helpful if he would refer to the basis on which the Government have reached the decision on 60 per cent., and how they will make their mind up. Will the Minister confirm that they might decide not to accept the recommendation of the Committee on Climate Change? If that is the case, in what circumstances would he be prepared to reject its advice? He should be mindful of implications for the business community. The Opposition have made our position extremely clear, and we seek guidance from the Minister on how, in precise circumstances, the Government will react to the advice of the Committee on Climate Change on whether to set a target of 60 per cent. or 80 per cent.

Linda Gilroy (Labour, Plymouth, Sutton)

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr. Atkinson. I want to make it clear that I am an “at least 80 per cent.” woman. Given the advice that I am receiving from marine scientists, I might even advocate a higher figure. That is because the complexity of what we are facing is significantly greater than some people might have realised. There might be time at a later point to say more about that.

Incidentally, I am greatly reassured by what Adair Turner said on 26 March. He said that he would be very surprised if he and his committee simply came back and said

“60 per cent. is absolutely fine, end of story.”

He also said: “I do think” a figure

“is a perfectly sensible thing to hand to the Committee to express a point of view on, rather than simply leap into let us not do 60, let us do 80, because...there is a value (even if we do end up simply saying yes, 80 per cent. is the right figure) in setting out the reasoning of why it is and also perhaps exploring a set of alternatives because we do not have to say 60 or 80, we could say 70. We could say 70 per cent. in 2050 but 90 per cent. by 2070; we could say 70 per cent. as a UK unilateral commitment but 85 as part of an international agreement”

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Northavon)

Does the hon. Lady accept that amendment No. 2 has no bearing on whether we should ask the Climate Change Committee—because we still will—what sort of answer it might come back with, and what we should then do with that answer? Surely, however, we do not enhance the credibility of the whole process if we hand the committee a Bill that everyone thinks has got the self-evidently wrong number in it?

Linda Gilroy (Labour, Plymouth, Sutton)

I want to follow on from what my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test said earlier and to try to follow the logic of where this argument is coming from. I had a lot of sympathy with what some Opposition Members were saying, particularly because of the discussions that I have had with the climate change panel that I have been working with throughout the pre-legislative process.

A lot of debate stems from the question of whether or not there is an analogy with the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England. Again, I think that the debate that took place in the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, under the chairmanship of the right hon. Member for Fylde (Mr. Jack), when he pressed the chair of the Climate Change Committee very hard, casts very interesting light on the argument that the hon. Members for Bexhill and Battle and for Vale of York are trying to put.

I have a lot of sympathy with the idea that this committee should be independent, in the sense of the MPC. Another analogy that I discussed with my committee change panel was the Low Pay Commission. In a way, the Low Pay Commission might be a better analogy, given the complexities with which it must deal.

Adair Turner pointed out the differences. First he said:

“the Bank of England itself does not even recommend on what the target should be; it simply has to take the target as actually defined by the Chancellor...The 2 per cent. plus or minus 1 per cent.”

On one level, therefore, the MPC is less independent than the Climate Change Committee. However, he also pointed out:

“in relation to inflation policy you can define one specific lever, the interest rate, and you can give that to an independent body to call up or down.”

He also said, and I really plead with Opposition Members not to get into too much of an “angels dancing on the head of a pin” debate about this:

“You cannot really do that for the Committee on Climate Change, because otherwise you would have to give them pretty much the whole of government policy because the levers that we could pull cover building regulations, they cover speed limits, they cover appliance regulation, they cover the design of the EU ETS”—

the emissions trading scheme—

“they cover taxation, et cetera.”

He cast a very interesting light on the issue and went on to debate what would happen if the Government disagreed with the committee.

Anne McIntosh (Conservative, Vale of York)

I do not wish to destroy the hon. Lady’s argument, because it has been eloquently put, but I was present at that sitting. I was hugely impressed by Lord Turner’s evidence—amazingly, he gave it without a note or an official by his side—and it will be a great loss when he is no longer permanent chairman of the Committee on Climate Change. However, does not the hon. Lady accept that the MPC’s recommendation to the Bank of England is very different for the reasons that the hon. Member for Southampton, Test eloquently outlined? Clause 20 clearly states that after the carbon budget for the period has been set, it cannot be revoked, so the Committee on Climate Change’s advice and the period that it covers will be completely different from the MPC’s advice.

Linda Gilroy (Labour, Plymouth, Sutton)

As I understand it, we are talking about the target and the budget, and as I just set out by citing Adair Turner’s evidence, the complexity is significantly greater. I thought that there was an inherent logic to what my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test tried to explain. The Committee on Climate Change is advisory, so the Government could of course disagree.

I shall finish on this point—my brief is very much not a Whips’ brief, so the Whip is probably thinking, “Why don’t you sit down, Linda?” Lord Turner pointed out that when the Government respond to the committee’s recommendation,

“it would be odd if we did not respond back and, therefore, if there were a very major divergence I think we would expect to see and, indeed, Parliament would expect to see and, indeed, I think the legislation requires that there is an explanation to Parliament of why the recommendations of the Government have diverged”.

The advice issue has many more nuances and dimensions than as under the straightforward confrontational situation that Opposition Members have set out.

Phil Woolas (Labour, Oldham East and Saddleworth)

It is a pleasure to serve under you on this important Committee, Mr. Atkinson. Let me try to reassure Opposition Members about the Government’s attitude to the advice that they will receive and Labour Members about the Government’s ambition being sufficient in respect of the important international effort. Given our wide-ranging debate, I am taking the liberty of assuming that you will not allow a stand part debate, Mr. Atkinson.

Peter Atkinson (Conservative, Hexham)

Order. Perhaps I can clarify the situation. The Committee has had an extensive debate about clause 2(1), but not about subsection (2), so if there were to be a clause stand part debate, it would, in my view, have to concentrate on the second half of the clause, not the first. I hope that that is helpful to the Minister.

Phil Woolas (Labour, Oldham East and Saddleworth)

As ever, you are extremely helpful, Mr. Atkinson. If I mention subsection (2) straight away, I shall have achieved my objective. We want a debate in the round.

The important point is that with all the debates about the targets and the percentage by a certain time in the clause, one can shift the goalposts by moving the baseline year. Right hon. and hon. Members will know that one trick of international negotiations is not to include a base year; we often manage to reach agreement by avoiding that question. Importantly, page 7 of the explanatory notes makes it clear that the target for 2050 is set by reference to a 1990 baseline

“rather than a particular quantum of emissions because the baseline itself is subject to revision as understanding of historic emissions improves.”

That adds a further complication to the situation, and that point answers the second question asked by the hon. Member for Vale of York.

It sounds strange to say that one could revise the emissions from 18 years ago, but we all know that all these matters must be subject to international compatibility and agreement if they are to be meaningful, because this is, as all hon. Members have said, a global effort. We are dealing with the ultimate embodiment of the concept of mutually assured destruction. As science and its methodologies improve our knowledge about our historical emissions going back to the base year of 1990, that may move the goalposts. Why is that important? It is of central importance to the United Nations framework convention on climate change process because of the point, which we accept, that the targets must take account of the historical burden of the developed, industrialised countries. Similarly, countries can use a change in the baseline and in the methodology of calculation to move the goalposts in their favour. I hope I have covered subsection (2) to the Committee’s satisfaction.

The clause is the centrepiece of the Bill. It underpins the emissions-reduction framework that the Bill establishes and puts into law our commitment to reduce CO2 emissions by at least 60 per cent.—not 60 per cent., but at least 60 per cent—through domestic and international action by 2050. Let me remind the Committee where this figure comes from. The science tells us clearly that in the context of the global effort, developed countries will need to cut their CO2 emissions by more than 50 per cent. if we are to avoid dangerous climate change. Action in the UK is, of course, a crucial part of that.

The science in itself does not dictate that the developed countries—the annexe 1 countries; the industrialised countries—must make a greater contribution because of our historical obligation. In our judgment, it will be impossible to reach international agreement unless developed countries accept that point.

If the advice to the committee and the remit of the committee were purely to look at an arithmetic contribution to equal burden sharing based on the best assessment of science, the point that hon. Members make could be accepted. However, as we are talking about a contribution that will take into account other factors, including economic factors, as was made clear by the hon. Member for Vale of York in a well informed intervention on the impact assessment, and as we must take into account other factors, including the social and the international dimensions, we are asking the committee for very important advice that is based on science, but over and above science. That is my first argument.

My second argument is based on parliamentary accountability. My answer on Second Reading was premised on the belief that Parliament would want to be able to assess the recommendations of the Committee and the Government’s response. That is why the scrutiny of the advice and the Government’s reaction is not at all comparable with what we normally debate in Public Bill Committees. This is not a one-off piece of advice and a statutory instrument put out on a Thursday evening. Not only is the Government’s response subject to the affirmative procedure—that is, of course, the case on a matter of such importance—but, more importantly, it is part of the process of the nation’s budget-setting decisions. I urge the Committee to consider that point.

The Chancellor announced that the carbon budgets would be announced in parallel with the financial Budget in March. I have no prior knowledge of the date of the Budget, in case there is a journalist in the room, but I expect it to be in March. When that announcement is made, the scrutiny of the carbon budgets and the policy that follows from that will be of huge importance to this nation. Therefore, I want to convince the Opposition and reassure my hon. Friends that by not necessarily accepting the advice of the committee in advance, I am not trying to wriggle off the advice. We are trying to create a process that is of huge importance to this country. I will deal with the conditions after I have given way.

Gregory Barker (Conservative, Bexhill and Battle)

The Minister is genuinely trying to be helpful, but he must accept that we would not expect the Government to sit on their hands, waiting for the figure to emerge in due course. There must be preparatory work by officials in his Department and right across Government in anticipation of a figure in the region of 80 per cent. that is likely to be accepted. Can he reassure us that there is a working assumption in Whitehall that that figure will be in the region of 80 per cent.?

Phil Woolas (Labour, Oldham East and Saddleworth)

The hon. Gentleman has cut to the quick. Yes, I can give that reassurance. The Bill’s Second Reading in the other place gave statutory authorisation to the Government—my Department is the lead—to expend public money on the preparation of the Bill. We have the office of climate change, which is a section within the Department with the job of working in such areas, as well as what we call the shadow Committee on Climate Change, which is already working.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton pointed out, Lord Turner’s evidence confirmed the point to the hon. Gentleman’s satisfaction. It is interesting and important to hear Lord Turner. He said to the Committee on 26 March:

“I do think it is a perfectly sensible thing to hand to the Committee to express a point of view on”—

he was referring to the stretching of the 60 per cent.—

“rather than simply leap into let us not do 60, let us do 80, because I think there is a value (even if we do end up simply saying yes, 80% is the right figure) in setting out the reasoning of why it is and also perhaps exploring a set of alternatives”.

That was Lord Turner’s view. My own view—this is a third argument with which to try and convince the Committee—

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Northavon)

The Minister is giving a constructive response, but—I am not being facetious—if there is a value in the committee going from 60 to 80 per cent. and explaining why, what is the standing of 60 per cent? Joking apart, why not 3 per cent? Why 60 per cent?

Phil Woolas (Labour, Oldham East and Saddleworth)

That is an important question. First, as the hon. Gentleman would accept, the figure is “at least 60 per cent.” Secondly, as we all agree, we must base the figure primarily on science. The carbon markets will not invest the trillions of pounds that we want them to if they believe that carbon targets are not based on science. If they believe it is a political fix, it will not work.

However, the figure is not just based on the science. The point that is not understood in the debate in the United Kingdom, which is not the case in other countries, is that whether the target is 60 or 80 per cent. does not really matter. What matters is how we get there. Personally—I hope journalists do not quote me out of context, but now that I have said that, I suppose they will—I am a 100 per cent. man. The debate that we will have on the trajectory is much more important than the debate on the end target. Indeed, unless we specify that the trajectory must be downwards, it would be possible to reach an 80 per cent. reduction by 2050 even after 30 years of increases, by which time we would have dangerous climate change. Although I understand that the 60/80 debate symbolises something important, it is not so important.

Mr. Gummerrose—

Phil Woolas (Labour, Oldham East and Saddleworth)

Let me continue my argument, before the right hon. Gentleman tempts me or presses me further.

I mentioned that what we do has to be done though co-ordinated global action. We have to give a clear signal to the international community that we are prepared to do our share, plus more. That has to be done within the trajectories that the European Union budgets and targets set out, because our offer as the European Union is to go as far as 30 per cent. by 2020, or 20 per cent. if we do not get the international agreement. That will be the primary pressure upon the level of our mid-term targets.

In that context, I need to see what the committee advises. The committee is more aware of these matters than I am, which is why I say seriously that I cannot envisage circumstances, other than the absurd, in which the Government could not accept the recommendation. Others may disagree, but I do not see circumstances in which Parliament would reject that advice. My hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test argued that we should say in advance that we would automatically accept the advice. The committee is an advisory committee, the chairman of which does not want us to tie him down in that way.

Nick Hurd (Conservative, Ruislip - Northwood)

The Minister is making a thoughtful speech, which I am following with great attention. May I press him a little on the terms of reference for the committee? First, can he make it clear that an explicit term of reference for the committee is the 2º C threshold, and that there will be a requirement on the committee to form a judgment about the compatibility of the target with the 2º C threshold? Secondly, given what he said about the need for the committee to take a view on what we might call equity—the appropriate contribution towards the global effort, based on equity—what terms of reference are the Government considering giving the committee on that extremely important matter?

Phil Woolas (Labour, Oldham East and Saddleworth)

I am grateful. I should have made clear the point about the 2º C, especially in light of our previous debate. As I said, I personally think the 60/80 debate is rather puerile. The irony is that in international forums, many countries argue that 2º C is not ambitious enough. A Pacific island state would agree with that. Our policy and the remit are based on 2º C because of acceptance of what is realistic.

Linda Gilroy (Labour, Plymouth, Sutton)

My hon. Friend is right about the 2º C. World Wide Fund for Nature scientists are giving evidence to the OSPAR commission on the convention for the protection of the marine environment of the north-east Atlantic. That will confirm that it is highly likely that, given the feedback in action and the tipping points, 2º C could be too much.

Phil Woolas (Labour, Oldham East and Saddleworth)

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, and to the WWF, whose advice on these matters, both domestically and internationally, is exceptional.

The hon. Member for Ruislip-Northwood asked about the remit. It is a broad remit that takes into account a number of factors. To back up my argument, let me refer to the explanatory notes. As well as the baseline that I mentioned, there is the issue raised by the hon. Member for Vale of York about which greenhouse gases are relevant. That is an extremely important debate.

We talk about carbon dioxide as shorthand for CO2 equivalent, but methane, for example, is 35 times more—[Interruption.]—or 25 times, or something of that order—23, I think. I am confusing it with nitrous oxide. My point is that part of the remit is to look at that and advise. That changes the circumstances. A rigid target—81 per cent., for the sake of argument—to include all greenhouse gases would affect industries that emit methane. They would have something to say about it.

We heard about one industry this morning. My hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent, North often reminds the House about the ceramics industry, so these decisions are important. Opposition Members are keen to ensure stability for businesses, but those businesses must have confidence in the targets.

Anne McIntosh (Conservative, Vale of York)

Will the Minister give way?

Phil Woolas (Labour, Oldham East and Saddleworth)

Let me make my third point, so that the Committee has the whole picture.

My third point is about accounting. The net UK carbon account, which is defined in clause 27, is important. For 2050, it is the level of net UK emissions of targeted greenhouse gases, after the number of carbon units have been added and subtracted in accordance with carbon accounting regulations. What does that mean? It means the amount that is accounted for overseas and domestically. The debate is about the balance of domestic effort and international offsetting. The whole debate about the target is premised on an assumption about carbon accounting, so it is important.

Anne McIntosh (Conservative, Vale of York)

I am grateful to the Minister for referring to the broader greenhouse gases. My concern, which I am sure is general to the Committee, and to Stoke-on-Trent and the ceramics industry, is that the Government could introduce measures to increase energy efficiency and other changes of behaviour. Perhaps he will confirm that now or later. I shall be interested in his response. How does he propose not to penalise heavy energy users such as the manufacturing sector, which is subject to international competition?

In areas such as the Vale of York, methane gas is created by the agricultural industry both in its agricultural processes and as an end-user. I hope that certain sectors of the industry will not be penalised if they expand.

Phil Woolas (Labour, Oldham East and Saddleworth)

I agree with the hon. Gentleman—[Hon. Members: “Hon. Lady!”] I am sorry. I was carried away with the passion of my argument.

I agree with the hon. Lady. Concerns that hon. Members have for the businesses in their constituencies—in this case agriculture—are highly subjective political judgments. The House should not put a burden on Lord Turner and his Committee, as the right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal and his hon. Friends are asking me to do.

Martin Horwood (Liberal Democrat, Cheltenham)

The Minister is making some important points. He is right to say that the Climate Change Committee is advisory and not directive, and that the baseline target will be based largely but not exclusively on scientific criteria. It is critical that we and the Committee understand why the Bill refers to 60 per cent. I hope the Minister accepts that it is based on, at the latest, early 1990s science, so it could give the message that we are prepared to accept a less equitable percentage. If that is not the case, the question asked by the hon. Member for Ruislip-Northwood must be answered: what is the view of equity of contraction and convergence on which we are basing any brief to the Committee subsequently to amend that number?

Phil Woolas (Labour, Oldham East and Saddleworth)

I will come straight to the point. The Government chose 60 per cent., not “at least” 60 per cent., based on the 2000 report of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution.

Martin Horwood (Liberal Democrat, Cheltenham)

It is 15 years out of date.

Phil Woolas (Labour, Oldham East and Saddleworth)

Absolutely right. The science shows—I am no scientist—that that is out of date and that the problem has got worse, with the accumulation of gases, the growth in emissions from developing economies, and the increasing rate of deforestation as the biggest net contribution to that increase. The Government asked Parliament for its view, and the parliamentary Committee that considered the draft Bill came to the similar conclusion that the UK would need a reduction of at least 60 per cent. in the light of the new scientific evidence, and “at least” became the policy, rather than just 60 per cent. That is what Parliament advised, and it agreed that the Climate Change Committee should be the body to consider it.

Peers in the other place came to the same conclusion. The House of Lords voted against changing the 2050 target at this stage, favouring detailed expert consideration of the issue over a hasty decision by Government or Parliament, which is what I am being pressed to take. The figure of at least 60 per cent. recognises the point that the hon. Gentleman made, and the Prime Minister’s speech confirmed that. Any cursory reading of the science will tell the Committee that a figure of around 80 per cent. is comparable with the previous figure of 60 per cent, recognising our contribution.

The hon. Member for Ruislip-Northwood asked about the remit of the committee and the scenarios that it must consider. The range of international scenarios is important. In the major economies process, when the developing countries asked for a commitment of 50 per cent. by 2050, that was based upon an understanding that the developed countries would have medium-term targets of 25 per cent. to 40 per cent. The United States of America would not accept the latter condition, and the developing countries would therefore not accept the long-term goal. Our figure of at least 60 per cent. is the ambitious target that satisfies both of those international blocs.

Martin Horwoodindicated dissent.

Phil Woolas (Labour, Oldham East and Saddleworth)

The hon. Gentleman is shaking his head. I have given four credible, comprehensive answers.

Martin Horwood (Liberal Democrat, Cheltenham)

The Minister has given a perfectly valid explanation of why 60 per cent. is no longer the scientific basis, but the hon. Member for Ruislip-Northwood made the original point that if we are to accept a lower number, and if the Minister is to explain why we are not putting “at least 80 per cent.” in the Bill instead of “at least 60 per cent.”, he must explain what the context of those other issues of equity of contraction and convergence would be, and what the brief to the committee must be. He must give some basis for that, and he has not done so.

Phil Woolas (Labour, Oldham East and Saddleworth)

I thought I had done so, by setting out the criteria of the base year, the accounting of carbon units, the international scenarios and the economics in the impact assessment. The other place came to the conclusion that Parliament should not take a hasty decision, but should wait. I reinforce that point, and ask the hon. Gentleman to take it seriously. This is not a one-off. It is part of a huge process. We have already been going down this road for two years.

My final answer is the chairman’s own compelling argument, which I have already quoted. It is perfectly sensible to ask the committee to look at the range of scenarios, even though it may well come up with 80 per cent. It is a matter of process, not a matter of principle. I know that the amendment tries to pin down our intention, and I hope that I have satisfied the hon. Gentleman and the Committee that our intention is honourable.

Nick Hurd (Conservative, Ruislip - Northwood)

The Minister has made a valiant effort, but I will press him on one point. It is important, because he argues that the Government require space to disagree with the committee, which will make some very big judgments on the aspects that are not science, such as the issue of equity, which he has rightly cited. The committee will have to make judgments on what constitutes a fair contribution by the UK to the global effort. The royal commission made some judgments on that, and reached the figure of 60 per cent. The trouble is that it was never transparent. We need transparency. Will the committee have a blank sheet of paper in relation to the judgment on equity, which is enormously subjective, with big variables, or will the Government narrow the terms of reference for the committee? Will the Minister be more explicit about the instructions and parameters that the Government will give the committee on that key issue of equity?

Phil Woolas (Labour, Oldham East and Saddleworth)

I clearly have not satisfied the hon. Gentleman. The answer is yes. The Bill and the guidance, which we will debate later, time allowing, show a range of scenarios within the different criteria that we will be asking the committee to look at. We will not say, “Come up with all the hypothetical international scenarios that you can think of”, but will advise it on where the Bali road map has got with the impact assessment and the economics.

The ranges are not strict and are available on the DEFRA website and in public documents. I was disappointed to hear the hon. Gentleman say that I was trying to give the Government space. That is not the case. I am trying to give the committee space so that it can be genuinely independent, like the Low Pay Commission, where again we were pressed on whether we would accept the recommendation for the minimum wage, whatever the commission said, to which we said no. We were criticised for that, but history shows that we accepted its advice. I see a parallel between that commission and the committee.

Martin Horwood (Liberal Democrat, Cheltenham)

But the committee will be in a different position from the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, which was making an academic judgment on equity and global convergence. For the committee to make such a judgment seems extraordinary without a framework set by the Government. Will the Minister be completely clear about the direction of contraction and convergence that will set that framework?

Phil Woolas (Labour, Oldham East and Saddleworth)

I accept the hon. Gentleman’s point. Perhaps he misunderstood my point about the commission. I referred to the Low Pay Commission to demonstrate that we had a similar debate on that, although he was right about the royal commission. Having said that, the commission’s judgment—this is not a popular thing to say—on the international contribution was to stick a finger in the air. We do not have an international agreement, so logically one cannot say what the contribution to it should be. It was simply an aspiration.

In answer to the hon. Gentleman’s question, the framework that the committee will use to come to a judgment is clearly and sufficiently laid out to avoid the danger to which he referred. We are talking about clause 2—this is not Second Reading—and many of his points will be covered later in the Committee’s deliberations. However, I think that I can give him the assurance that he seeks.

We have had a debate not on the virtues of 80 per cent. or 60 per cent., but on whether we should accept up front the committee’s recommendation which, as my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test said, will come in our debate on clause 33. I admire the Conservative party’s position in not jumping on the 80 per cent. bandwagon. When we announced the policy change, I said, “If we go for 60 per cent., everyone else will go for 80 per cent.” I am as sure as eggs is eggs that if I announced 80 per cent. today, postcards galore would be flying into the office by Monday morning demanding 90 per cent.

Logically, we should go for 100 per cent, and without an international agreement, we had better go for 200 per cent. to avoid dangerous climate change—seriously. As a net contributor to emissions reductions, we could forest over the Vale of York. That would be a start It would probably avoid flooding as well. The debate has been about whether we should accept the recommendation up front. That would deny Parliament, never mind the Government, the right to say no. I admire the Conservative party’s position. It is actually trying to satisfy one lobby arguing for 80 per cent., and another arguing for consideration. I accept that. The right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal admitted from a sedentary position that having one’s cake and eating it is often satisfactory.

Joan Walley (Labour, Stoke-on-Trent North)

Does my hon. Friend agree that the most important thing is the starting point in the Bill? Given that we should be at 100 per cent. come the low-carbon economy, will he try to align the timing of the Bill with the scientific evidence, before Parliament resumes at the end of the summer, so that “at least 80 per cent.” can be put in the Bill?

Phil Woolas (Labour, Oldham East and Saddleworth)

I can give the reassurance, based on the previous debate, that 2° C is our policy, and I am looking for a way to satisfy the Committee on that point.

I can also give the assurance that what matters is the mid-term goal and the trajectory. The most important consideration for the United Kingdom in respect of that mid-term trajectory is our signing up and adhering to the European Union policy. Clause 6, which we will come to, deals with our targets for 2020 and the EU offer. It means that the carbon budgets that the Climate Change Committee will be advising on in mid-term will be much more important than the end target. I hope that that satisfies my hon. Friend.

I have exhausted my arguments. I hope that I have convinced the Committee of the virtues of giving the independent committee a bit of space to look at the matter.

John Gummer (Conservative, Suffolk Coastal)

I have listened carefully to the Minister, and I respect his argument. However, he has pushed me into a position that is slightly different from the one that I thought I would be in. The difficulty now is that he has admitted—I mean “admitted” not in the newspaper sense, but in the sense that he has stated something—that the work in his Department is based on the assumption that we are, whether we like it or not, in the area of 80 per cent., if one takes a reasonable view of the responsibilities of the rich countries.

The Minister also said that the figure in the Bill is based on a mechanism that is similar to the one used in his Department. I am loth to have a Bill in which all the other figures are based on the up-to-date situation, but that figure is based on a much earlier scenario.

The Minister has explained his difficulties, but nobody is asking him to say that he will accept everything that the Climate Change Committee recommends. This situation is different from the Low Pay Commission, for example, because the Government did not have a minimum wage to start with. They did not say, “We will have a minimum wage of £4.02.” They said, “Give us a recommendation.” I know that the parallel is not exact, but we have a minimum wage in this case. Will the Minister be kind enough to explain whether it is really sensible to leave in a figure from 15 years ago?

Phil Woolas (Labour, Oldham East and Saddleworth)

I point the right hon. Gentleman to the phrase “at least 60 per cent.”, which includes everything above 60 per cent.—the process does not stop at 100 per cent. I disagree with him in one respect. If he thinks that no one had a minimum wage in mind, he is wrong. I seem to remember the Transport and General Workers Union lobby, which was for £7.50, was it not? I jest.

The parallel with the Low Pay Commission does work in that parliamentarians pressed us to commit up front to accepting whatever was recommended. The argument at the time was that it would give the country greater confidence if it could see that the figure had been arrived at by an independent process that was then subject to the due process of Government decision making, including, incidentally, the devolved Administrations, which have not been mentioned in this case. Such a process would give stability.

As I have said, I have exhausted my arguments. I hope that I have persuaded my hon. Friend the Member for Bury, North, who moved the amendment, of the virtue of my case. I repeat, I find it very difficult to conceive of circumstances in which both the Government and Parliament would not accept the advice.

David Chaytor (Labour, Bury North)

I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend for responding to the debate so carefully and painstakingly. I want to reply as briefly as possible to the key arguments. Essentially, this single digit amendment has triggered the best part of three and a half hours of debate. The only benefit is that that may reduce the time needed to debate part 2 of the Bill, because the majority of the debate related to clause 32, which is in part 2.

I want to reiterate the three arguments in favour of the Bill containing the “at least 80 per cent.” formula. I entirely understand the case presented by my hon. Friend the Minister, but it seems to me that if we accept—I think that the whole Committee does—that the Climate Change Committee will have an advisory responsibility later this year, we cannot simultaneously argue that there should be a figure in the Bill, because it is for the Committee to advise us on what that figure should be. To follow the logic of arguing that the matter is for the Climate Change Committee, there should be no figure at all and the reference to “at least 60 per cent.” should be deleted. However, if that is not the case—it is not—and the Government’s position is that “at least 60 per cent.” should be included, it logically follows that if “at least 60 per cent.” is obsolete, we should go for something higher.

Gregory Barker (Conservative, Bexhill and Battle)

The hon. Gentleman’s point about taking out the figure is valid. The Conservatives considered that proposal very seriously. The problem is that while it is intellectually coherent, it is a very difficult message to convey and is capable of being misconstrued in the outside world. One has to be practical and accept that people who take an interest in such matters are looking for a lead. It is much easier to communicate and carry with us support from outside with the 60 per cent. figure, with the understanding that we are looking for a higher figure from the Climate Change Committee.

David Chaytor (Labour, Bury North)

I appreciate that point, and I do not propose to table a further amendment to delete “at least 60 per cent.” All hon. Members, including the Minister, accept that the science has moved on and that the matter involves not only science, but economics, political judgment and our negotiating position in the post-Kyoto negotiations to reach a settlement for beyond 2012. Taking into account all those factors, “at least 80 per cent.” is the more realistic figure at this stage.

I want to reiterate a point that I made in my opening remarks, because I may not have made myself clear—following the advice of the hon. Member for Banbury to my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test earlier, I am tempted to repeat the whole argument. Essentially, the issue is here regardless of climate change. Because of the finite nature of fossil fuels, it makes absolute sense to set a higher target to send the right signals now to business, industry and the population of all western industrialised countries as a whole that our way of life, technologies and expectations must change. The sooner that we prepare for that, the better and less painful it will be.

In respect of the target date, the Minister made the important point that the interim target of 2020 is more important than the target of 2050, because of the trajectory. However, we need two dates in order to have a trajectory, and we cannot have a trajectory on the basis of a starting point. I want to challenge the notion that 2050 is less relevant or not relevant. We need a starting point, a mid-point and an end point. Having said that, I do not accept that there is overwhelming significance in the choice of a target or a date.

David Chaytor (Labour, Bury North)

I will try to resume where I left off before we adjourned for lunch.

The precise targets and dates are not issues on which we should pin all our ambitions. We need to think about the direction of travel, for which we need a start point and an end point. We need to think in periods of time. There is nothing God-given about 2020—2015 is arguably a better date for the interim target, but it could equally well be 2045 or 2055.

The Minister has said that the 2050 80 per cent. target is becoming symbolic. It is more than symbolic; it is indicative. I have stressed the point that we are talking about “at least 80 per cent.”, and we should not be too hung up on a precise figure.

What interested me about the debate—I am conscious of time and do not wish to detain the Committee for too long, as I know we are behind schedule—was the way in which some Opposition Members decided to debate not the relative merits of 80 per cent. or 60 per cent. but a topic that relates to our consideration of part 2 of the Bill, namely the status of the Climate Change Committee. That is interesting, because it suggests that they do not want to debate the relative merits of 80 per cent. or 60 per cent., which might cause them some difficulty. It may be that the extent of climate change denial within the official Opposition is far greater than we were led to believe by the three Members who voted against the Bill on Second Reading. That is not an issue to pursue at the moment, but it is a point that I have to make.

I was impressed by many of the speeches on this amendment. In particular, I was impressed by the Opposition’s adherence to the importance of building targets on the basis of science, although I would have been more impressed had they shown at any point in this Parliament or previous ones that they form their political judgment on the basis of scientific advice. Perhaps this is not the moment to remind everyone of the intricate debate over the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, but that did not strike me as a classic example of a political party forming judgments on the basis of science.

Moving on to the Climate Change Committee, the Minister pointed out the contradiction between what the official Opposition are arguing today and what they were arguing yesterday on the independent planning commission. It is possible to reconcile the principle of establishing Government policy on the basis of the best scientific evidence with the need for political judgment and an element of economic judgment to be brought into play, which is why the Climate Change Committee is not an entirely scientific body.

We are talking about the interplay between science, politics and economics, largely because those issues—the overall issue of climate change and keeping to the recommended 2° target—are not just matters for the UK. We have to form our own policy in the context of what will be most valuable in future international negotiations.

I reiterate my point about the critical importance of the finite nature of fossil fuels. In opening the debate, I referred to the Prime Minister’s speech to the European Council last weekend. In responding to the debate, I want to refer to the Prime Minister’s comment at Prime Minister’s questions yesterday, when he said—this is perhaps the first time that this has been said—that the underlying cause of the dramatic increase in the oil price in the past two years, and particularly in the past six months, is the mismatch between supply and demand.

For the first time in history, demand is outstripping supply. That involves more than speculation or the unwillingness of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries to co-operate. It is an inevitable consequence of economic growth in other parts of the world. Now many hundreds of millions of people in China, India and other parts of Asia are demanding, absolutely rightly, the same kind of lifestyle and privileges from which we in the west have benefited for a century or more. That is the key fact that underlines this debate, and it is one of the most powerful arguments for setting a more stringent target at this stage.

Sir Nicholas Stern has been incredibly helpful not only because of the publication of his original report two years ago, but because of his speech to the Carbon Rating Agency yesterday, when he said that he is now convinced that climate change is happening more quickly than had previously been thought. He said that it is happening faster than he thought even two years ago, and therefore emissions need to be reduced even more sharply. He went on to say:

“I now think the appropriate thing would be in the middle”

of the range of 450 to 550 parts per million. He also said:

“To get below 500 ppm ... would cost around 2 per cent. of GDP.”

The significance of this is twofold—first, it illustrates how fast the reality of climate change is coming on us, and, secondly, it illustrates that we are discussing not only scientific judgments but economic judgments. All Governments will have to consider the impact on their GDP of the cost not only of mitigating climate change, but of adapting to it. Sir Nicholas’s speech yesterday further serves to justify the importance of a more stringent target in the long term as well as for 2020.

In conclusion, if we want the Climate Change Committee to be the final arbiter, that undermines any case for having a figure in the Bill at all. We all understand the need for a figure, and of course it can be amended in the light of the Climate Change Committee’s advice. As the Minister has said, it is difficult to think of circumstances in which any Government would not accept that advice, but at the end of the day, we need a balance of science, economics and politics if we are to secure international agreement. We need a higher target if we are to send the right signals about the urgency of making the transition to a low-carbon economy not only to our own people, but to the nations of the developing world. There is no realistic possibility of the developing world coming on board and seriously addressing reductions in their rate of growth in emissions if the rich countries are not prepared to set high targets, too.

I ask the Minister to consider a point that has not been mentioned yet. The current position is that the interim Climate Change Committee is charged with producing its first report on 1 December. Report stage for this Committee is unlikely to take place before the recess, so the Bill will be on Report in October or November. In one sense, that highlights the absurdity of having a target in the Bill that could become obsolete within a matter of weeks or even days. The Minister should think seriously about the timing not only of Report but of the Climate Change Committee’s first report. I know the chair of the committee has a lot to consider at the moment, but it would not be unreasonable to bring forward the date of the first report from 1 December to 1 November, or at the very least to request an interim report from the Climate Change Committee for publication before Report. In view of the fact that that perhaps provides the basis for a way forward and a consensus, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Clause 3

David Maclean (Conservative, Penrith and The Border)

I want to make a few comments, and ask the Minister a couple of questions. I will not attempt surreptitiously to move the clever amendment in my name, which you wisely did not select for debate today, Mr. Atkinson. However, I would like the Minister, in responding to the clause stand part debate, to give me firm reassurances about subsection (2).

If the Secretary of State is going to consider scientific knowledge about climate change, biodiversity loss will be among the many things that he will consider. According to Dr. Rodolfo Dirzo, who is a world expert on biodiversity at Stanford university, the most critical global environmental change is biological extinction. For one thing, biological extinction is the only irreversible global environmental change. Climate change, given enough time and if we do the right things over a period of time, can be reversed, but if we lose certain species, it will be impossible to recover them. Environmental damage and biodiversity loss in forest ecosystems cost between $2.1 trillion to $4.8 trillion per year—I think that was the figure given at the conference in Bonn, which the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs attended last week or last month.

Joan Ruddock (Labour, Lewisham, Deptford)

Last month.

David Maclean (Conservative, Penrith and The Border)

Even if the $4.8 trillion figure is an exaggeration, the lowest figure is $2.1 trillion per annum according to a report to the UN convention on biological diversity in Bonn. The report, entitled “The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity”, was commissioned by the European Union and the German Government. For the first time, I believe, the report attaches a monetary value to the services provided by species and ecosystems. The report says that those systems are often undervalued by humanity. That is an important new piece of scientific knowledge relating to climate change that none of us knew about and which scientists have generally not taken into account in the past.

John Gummer (Conservative, Suffolk Coastal)

My right hon. Friend is right to point to those figures. I hope that he also agrees that, even if the figures were not so overwhelming, we have a fundamental moral duty to hand on the planet in a better state than we received it. If we handed on to our children, with every year less rather than more, then we are doing something fundamentally immoral. Contrary to what the hon. Member for Bury, North has said, some of us based our decisions about the science on very strong moral arguments, which is why we took a different view from him—it has nothing to do with our scientific judgment. We simply put morality first.

David Maclean (Conservative, Penrith and The Border)

My right hon. Friend makes an exceedingly telling point, and far more eloquently than I could. However, ours is more than just a moral obligation. Millions of species could be at risk by 2050—not millions of one kind of species, but possibly millions of different and undiscovered species in the rain forests—and it would be utterly wrong to lose them. We all worry about the polar bears and orang-utans, which of course are important, but they are probably sexier and more television friendly than some of the bugs, creepy crawlies, flora and other things in the rain forests that could be vital to human health. Pharmaceuticals, biomedical research, the production of food, whether on land or in the oceans, fibres, fuel, clean water, healthy soil and the ability to store carbon all depend on biodiversity. Those are crucial aspects of scientific knowledge that the Minister ought to consider.

I am certain that the Secretary of State would consider some of those things, but I would like the Minister to assure us that, if the power in clause 3 is exercised, all the biodiversity aspects will be taken into account—not just whether the temperature is up or down 0.5°, or whether we should opt for 60 or 80 per cent.

Michael Weir (Scottish National Party, Angus)

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr. Atkinson. I do not intend to detain the Committee for long, but I raised some concerns about this clause earlier. In the previous debate, the Minister told us that in setting the target the Committee on Climate Change would take into account a wide set of factors, including economic factors. That is perfectly reasonable, but my concerns relate to the stage after the target has been set. Clause 3(1) gives the Secretary of State the power to alter by order the percentage target. To answer my own Bercow question, that would be done by the affirmative resolution procedure. It tends to be assumed that that would be a power to increase the target after the committee’s report, but as I pointed out on Tuesday the clause does not state that the target can only be increased upwards, so the Secretary of State could decrease it.

I am sure that the Minister will argue that subsection (2) contains safeguards by stating what factors must be taken into account in deciding to amend the percentage target or change the baseline. On the face of it, that is perfectly true. Indeed, on first reading the clause, I thought it inconceivable that the target could be reduced, given the overwhelming amount of scientific evidence pointing to an increase, whether 60 or 80 per cent. However, I was struck by the Government impact assessment presented to the Committee on Tuesday. On page 29, under the heading, “Issue 3: Review of statutory targets and/or interim budgets”, paragraph 3.2.25 states:

“It is important to consider whether, and in what circumstances the proposed system of unilateral statutory targets and budgets could be amended in the context of managing environmental risk, economic cost and wider policy objectives effectively.”

What does that mean?

The following paragraph cites the need to review the multinational agreement, which might be necessary given the European Union’s commitment to increase the target in the event of a multilateral agreement. However, my concern relates to paragraph 3.2.27, which states that amendments could be made

“so that emissions reductions could be spread over a longer timeframe, if it became clear that the emissions forecasts used when a budget had initially been set proved to be significantly inaccurate. This could result from large changes in the price of gas on international markets, or the pace of development in a new technology”.

So economic factors could come into the equation as well. However, it is not entirely clear whether that refers only to the carbon budget, or also to the target itself.

Paragraph 3.2.28 goes on to say:

“The capacity to review budgets or targets would enable policy makers to: minimise economic and social costs and competitiveness risks arising from significant changes to key drivers of mitigation costs; and, continue to demonstrate international leadership in the light of revised assessments surrounding environmental risk.”

That seems to be a much wider interpretation, and allows the Government, whoever they may be at the time—this is not a party political point because up to 2050 there will inevitably be changes in Government, whatever we think about current opinion polls—to make changes, specifically in the price of gas in international markets

Later in our deliberations, we shall come to the rightly wide-ranging factors that will be taken into account in setting the carbon budget. However, there is a world of difference between the carbon budget and the 2050 target. The former is a method of delivery, and the latter is the ultimate destination or the guiding star of where we want to go. Given that the target was set after taking account of economic and other factors, and that the budgets are the five-year plans, if that is not too Stalinist a description, for achieving those targets, I can well understand that unforeseen and pressing economic reasons may arise, and that it may necessary to alter a five-year carbon budget, although I hope that subsequent budgets would try to make up any shortfall. However, I do not fully understand why it should be necessary to alter the long-term target as a result of economic changes—such as the rise in the cost of gas as quoted in the impact assessment—which one hopes would be relatively short-term economic shocks.

John Gummer (Conservative, Suffolk Coastal)

I follow the hon. Gentleman’s argument and have great sympathy with it, but is it possible to ask a Committee, as the Government have done, to make a judgment on what targets should be, but to tell it that those targets must be in only one direction? Surely, if people are to believe the Committee, it must have the opportunity at some future date of saying that the science has moved on and that we need to raise the targets further. Similarly, it must have the opportunity of offering the Minister the possibility of a reduction. We do not believe that that would ever happen, but it would be odd legislation if the Government could not, even on the advice of the Committee, change the target if something that we know nothing about now, and which we do not believe will happen because it would seem almost impossible, were to happen in 2020. There must be a mechanism whereby the Government could change the targets in either direction.

Michael Weir (Scottish National Party, Angus)

With respect, that is not my point. I understand what the right hon. Gentleman is saying, but my concern is the factors that allow a change. I accept that if a huge change in the science proved that climate change was not as bad as we thought—that is highly unlikely—clearly there would be an argument for reviewing the targets.

My concern is that we are setting a target for 2050, by which time I shall be waiting for my telegram from the Queen. We could be saying that as gas and oil are going up in price, we must abandon that long-term target because of what we hope are short-term economic impacts. I can well understand that in the five-year carbon budget there may have to be a change to get over an immediate difficulty, but the long-term target should remain in place, and we should make an effort to recalibrate that long-term target. My concern is that we could have a series of economic shocks in that long period and find that the Government abandon that long-term carbon reduction target.

I have no intention of voting against the clause, but I seek reassurance and an explanation from the Minister, because it not clear from the final impact assessment whether it refers to the target, or merely to the carbon budget. It seems to refer to both. I am concerned about that narrow point—not the scientific evidence, but a change to the target, perhaps because of an economic downturn or shock within the period.

Gregory Barker (Conservative, Bexhill and Battle)

My right hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border is proving to be a powerful champion for the rain forests, building on his important work on behalf of the United Kingdom at the Rio conference. I endorse his view. The case for including a consideration of biodiversity loss in the clause is strong. My right hon. Friend is absolutely right to keep repeating his concerns about the alarming rate of biodiversity loss. According to the United Nations global environmental outlet report October 2007, 30 per cent. of amphibians, 23 per cent. of mammals—

Peter Atkinson (Conservative, Hexham)

Order. I apologise for interrupting the hon. Gentleman. I allowed a certain amount latitude to the right hon. Member for Penrith and The Border during his contribution, but we are not debating biodiversity in this clause. If the hon. Gentleman refers to clause 11, he will see that that debate is more appropriate to that clause. I would be grateful if the Committee did not enter into a long debate on that subject.

Gregory Barker (Conservative, Bexhill and Battle)

Ah, in that case I shall draw my remarks to a conclusion. I echo the sensible points made earlier by my right hon. Friend.

Anne McIntosh (Conservative, Vale of York)

In concluding his remarks on clause 2, the Minister made some interesting comments relating to my remarks on how business could prepare. The clause will allow the Secretary of State to amend the baseline. What the Minister did not say is whether, in the trajectory towards that, he will give any illumination on what the percentage target should be, for example in the run up to 2020. The business community, notably the CBI, has said that it is keen to have a credible framework for working towards a low-carbon economy and it believes that the Climate Change Bill can achieve that. It would particularly welcome the use of an interim target and rolling carbon budgets to provide that. Is that a possibility within the context of the clause and later clauses related to this one?

I wonder whether the Minister could clarify clause 3(4), which clearly states that the power

“may only be exercised if it appears to the Secretary of state that there have been significant developments in European or international law or policy that make it appropriate to do so.”

Is he therefore suggesting that if a 2009 treaty flows from the Copenhagen follow-up to Kyoto, at that earlier stage the Government might be minded to alter the baseline, or is he looking out to the longer grass?

Phil Woolas (Labour, Oldham East and Saddleworth)

I thank you, Mr. Atkinson, and the Committee for some thoughtful points. Let me try to explain the purpose of the clause briefly, and then answer the questions equally briefly, I hope. As has been said, we are talking about the circumstances in which the 2050 target and the baseline year on which it is based—currently 1990—may be amended. We are trying to achieve—all hon. Members have signed up to this—greater predictability for businesses and households, so that when they invest in low-carbon technologies, they do so with confidence. That is why we are setting up the framework.

I think that we all agree that the legislation is intended to be in place for many decades. Changes in that period are likely, in both scientific knowledge and in the international context. With that in mind, we consider that allowing the 2050 target to be changed through secondary legislation provides necessary flexibility, but let me give some reassurances to the Committee. The procedures that have been put in place to allow this change are especially strong, perhaps stronger than in other areas of legislation, to ensure that the power is not used inappropriately. In parliamentary terms, any change in the target or the baseline year will be subject to affirmative resolution in both Houses. That is important and will guarantee high levels of transparency and parliamentary control.

Furthermore, if you will allow me to stray, Mr. Atkinson, under clause 4 no amendment may be made until the advice of the independent committee has been taken into account and the devolved Administrations have had the opportunity to make their views known.

John Gummer (Conservative, Suffolk Coastal)

For the sake of those who do not understand the parliamentary arrangements, will the Minister confirm that the affirmative resolution procedure will provide strong protection because it can be voted against in both Houses? People sometimes think that this is a very complex system. Such statutory instruments cannot be amended, but they can be defeated. As this is a single and simple matter, it would easily be defeated were this or any Government to behave dishonourably.

Phil Woolas (Labour, Oldham East and Saddleworth)

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman who has vast experience in these matters. He is right. The provisions sound dry on paper, but if one envisages the circumstances of such a vote, one can see that they provide surety. My point about the devolved Administrations is important because this is a United Kingdom Bill, introduced with the consensus of the devolved Administrations. I hope that that answer is acceptable to the Committee.

I will answer the points about the target and then provide the assurances on biodiversity sought by the right hon. Member for Penrith and The Border. First, as the hon. Member for Angus is anticipating the arrival of his telegram so far in advance, I note his acceptance that Scotland will still be in the United Kingdom.

Michael Weir (Scottish National Party, Angus)

The Minister is quite wrong in that assertion. We seek the dissolution of the Union and of Parliament, not necessarily of the Crown.

Phil Woolas (Labour, Oldham East and Saddleworth)

I am sure that she or he will send a telegram anyway. However, the hon. Gentleman asked some reasonable questions. The target can be amended only with regard to developments in

“scientific knowledge about climate change”

or in “international law or policy”. I will explain why “scientific knowledge” includes biodiversity, not just semantically but legislatively.

The only other reason for a change in the target is that the basis of it has changed. For example, we may add other greenhouse gases to it in the future. One reason for including changes in international law and policy, in lay terms, is so that the UK has negotiating power at the international table. As I have said, the target can be changed only within those strict criteria and based on the advice to which I have referred.

The right hon. Member for Penrith and The Border is quite right to push the Committee and the Government on biodiversity. The phrase,

“scientific knowledge about climate change”

includes biodiversity because that is a scientific point. He mentioned the international agreements on biodiversity to which the UK has signed up under various Governments. They include the convention on biological diversity, to which he referred, the convention on international trade in endangered species, the convention on the conservation of migratory species of wild animals and others. Given that the UK is a signatory to those treaties, the international context provides the protection that he seeks.

The establishment of a cap-and-trade system, which this is designed to accomplish, offers great hope, if not the best hope, for financing the world’s anti-deforestation measures. The hon. Gentleman will know that the policy he has pursued has been supported by the Government, and the United Kingdom has a strong stance on it, although we would like to have more to do with it.

The hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle made his point effectively, and the hon. Member for Vale of York asked about the trajectory and about Copenhagen. I think that I have covered the latter, but I ask for help on the trajectory.

Anne McIntosh (Conservative, Vale of York)

It may be appropriate to raise this later, but on the baseline, is the hon. Gentleman also considering setting out and possibly amending targets that we should reach by 2020, so that businesses will know in advance? For the reasons he gave earlier, the early years are just as important as the later years.

Phil Woolas (Labour, Oldham East and Saddleworth)

I remembered the point as the hon. Lady repeated it. The assurance she needs is in clause 6. The point was made eloquently by my hon. Friend the Member for Bury, North, and I used the word “symbolic” regarding the 80 per cent. target in the context of the high political debate taking place in this country, not with regard to its scientific importance.

On the trajectory, the carbon budgets are dealt with in clauses 5 and 6, and the potential changes to those are dealt with in clause 7.

Clause 4

Gregory Barker (Conservative, Bexhill and Battle)

I beg to move amendment No. 56, in clause 4, page 3, line 16, after ‘publish’, insert

‘at the same time as laying before Parliament the relevant order’.

May I seek your clarification, Mr. Atkinson? Should I also speak to amendments Nos. 57 and 70?

Peter Atkinson (Conservative, Hexham)

No. That is the next group of amendments.

Gregory Barker (Conservative, Bexhill and Battle)

Thank you for that clarification.

As we have discovered over the course of our debates, there is some concern that in future the Government may decline to implement the full advice of the independent Committee on Climate Change. Amendments Nos. 57 and 70 deal more fully with that, but this is a largely technical amendment, which would make it clear that the committee’s advice must be published and that, if decisions made by the Minister differ from the recommendation, the reason for the difference must also be specified and published. This is a probing amendment and I shall make my principal remarks on amendments Nos. 57 and 70.

Martin Horwood (Liberal Democrat, Cheltenham)

Clause 4 is about transparency, which is a wise provision to have in the Bill given the confusion that we have already witnessed in Committee over the Government’s intentions on the balance of decision-making power between the Committee on Climate Change and the Government and/or Parliament. At an earlier stage of the Bill, the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle seemed to suggest that some hypothetical future Government, in which he might be a Minister, would always take the committee’s advice. The logical position for him to take on clause 4 would therefore be to delete it.

Gregory Barker (Conservative, Bexhill and Battle)

That is an interesting proposition, and we look to the next general election with increasing confidence. Anticipating that the Administration of the right hon. Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron) will run all the way to 2050 would stretch to the limit the confidence of even our most ardent supporters.

Martin Horwood (Liberal Democrat, Cheltenham)

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention, but I think that he may be missing the point slightly. The amendment to the 2050 target can be made much sooner than that.

John Gummer (Conservative, Suffolk Coastal)

Front-Bench and Back-Bench Members may not always be as enthusiastic as each other on various things, but everyone is clear about the fact that there is a specific commitment to accept what the committee suggests to the Government about the target. We take the same view as the Government about it being an advisory committee, but we have said that if the Government are not going to put it in the Bill, they have to make it clear that they will accept what the committee says on the target.

Martin Horwood (Liberal Democrat, Cheltenham)

As ever, I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman. Amendment No. 56 refers to the subsection in which

“the order makes provision different from that recommended by the committee”.

So we are discussing the Secretary of State disagreeing with the committee’s advice. I will resist the temptation to further debate the party politics, which would not be wise. I accept the good faith of the Conservative spokesman, on this occasion at least.

The debate on other parts of the Bill has also, probably quite accurately, revealed a level of potential distrust about Government intentions in such proceedings. We have heard the phrase, “wriggle room”, and I have worried about the influence of “go-slow Departments” in other parts of Government perhaps trying to influence the process. The right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal referred to civil servants who might say at some stage in the process, “Better not Minister”. Therefore, it seems right to have amendments that make the process absolutely watertight wherever possible, and in that respect, I happily support amendment No. 56. It is part of the process of making crystal clear what should happen under those circumstances, which is that, if the Government differ from the Committee on Climate Change’s advice on the target, Parliament must know the reasons why at the time at which the order to change the target is being laid. That will enable us to test the methodology suggested, to hold the Government to account and to spot any undue influence by wrigglers, go-slowers or better-nots.

John Gummer (Conservative, Suffolk Coastal)

I hope that amendment No. 56 is not seen in anyway as an attack on the Government; it is an attempt to ensure that the Government and any future Government are properly concerned with the issue. It is important because the Minister has shown himself willing to try to meet us. I referred on a radio programme to his willingness to move on the 2° in terms that may be embarrassing to him. I want to make it clear that the measure is there because we all feel that all Governments of any kind should be so constrained because it gives confidence to the public, and, after all, we are looking 40 years ahead—that is a very long time to predict how good future Ministers might be.

Phil Woolas (Labour, Oldham East and Saddleworth)

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his flattering remarks but I wish that he would stop—there may be a reshuffle or something. Somebody may read the wrong things into his comments.

Let me try to help the Committee. On amendment No. 56, we know that the Committee on Climate Change has been established to give us expert advice. Clause 4 requires the Government to take the advice of the committee before making any amendment to the long-term target. That is an important part of the process. To reinforce the importance of the committee’s advice further, we accepted an amendment in the other place so that if the target is amended in a way that differs from the committee’s recommendation, the Secretary of State must set out the reasons for doing so. We accepted that point. It is quite possible that the Government would want to publish those reasons at the same time, and as I shall go on to say, it is not only quite possible, it is quite likely. Any Government will be aware of the likely public interest in a change to the long-term target. In addition, clause 3 requires that the order amending the target, as I have said twice already, must be subject to the affirmative resolution procedure. I think that it is unlikely that any Government would be keen to go into a debate in both Houses without having first made their rationale clear.

Gregory Barker (Conservative, Bexhill and Battle)

I do not think that anybody would doubt the point that the Minister is making, certainly in respect of the current Government or the next Administration, so far as we can see. However, as has been pointed out, we are dealing with the next 40 years here, and with the best will in the world, it is impossible to try to anticipate the political make-up or dynamics of an Administration 30 or 40 years hence. Is he confident that he can see that far down the road?

Phil Woolas (Labour, Oldham East and Saddleworth)

I am very confident that I cannot see that far down the road. I am in a slightly difficult position in that the Government do not have a position on the tabling of the amendment. However, I am prepared today to put on record that if this Government propose to amend the long-term target in a way that differs from the committee’s advice, we will publish our reasons at the same time as laying the order for the amendment. I hope that that satisfies the point that the hon. Gentleman is rightly making.

Gregory Barker (Conservative, Bexhill and Battle)

That is a very generous offer, but it covers only two of the next 42 years, so it does not really address the substance of the point.

Phil Woolas (Labour, Oldham East and Saddleworth)

As I do not anticipate a change in Government in the next 42 years, it goes much further than that. I hope that what I have said gives the hon. Gentleman surety. I do not disagree with the point that he has made, and I can go as far as putting that commitment on record. I hope that the Committee will agree that that has been done in good faith. I thank him for his probing amendment.

Gregory Barker (Conservative, Bexhill and Battle)

The amendment was tabled initially as a probing amendment, but the arguments that the Minister has advanced have done nothing to reassure me. The key issue is not the good intentions of this Government, or indeed the next one, but establishing a modus operandi that would bind all Governments through the next four decades. We remain somewhat concerned, and although we hear what the Minister says, we will reserve our position for Report. I do not intend to press the amendment to a Division. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Gregory Barker (Conservative, Bexhill and Battle)

I beg to move amendment No. 57, in clause 4, page 3, line 17, at end insert—

‘( ) Before laying before Parliament an order making provision different from that recommended by the Committee, the Secretary of State shall consult the Committee on the effect that difference will have on the risks for the United Kingdom of the predicted impact of climate change.’.

Peter Atkinson (Conservative, Hexham)

With this it will be convenient to discuss amendment No. 70, in clause 55, page 26, line 2, at end insert—

‘( ) In preparing reports under this section the Secretary of State must have regard to whether the net UK carbon account is within the indicative annual range for the relevant periods and the effect of any differences on the risks for the United Kingdom of the predicted impact of climate change.’.

Gregory Barker (Conservative, Bexhill and Battle)

As we have just heard, amendment No. 56 would have required the Secretary of State, in the event of setting a target that differed from that recommended by the committee, to publish at the same time as resetting the target the reasons why the advice of the committee was not followed. Moreover, in the event of a Government ignoring its advice—we are not anticipating that the Government today, or next year, or the year after would do so, but we are looking at the whole lifetime of the legislation until 2050—amendment No. 57 would require the Secretary of State of the day to consult the committee on what effect that diversion from its scientific advice would have on the risks that the UK would face from the predicted impact of man-made climate change.

Amendment No. 70 would then further require the Secretary of State to consider whether the country was still on course to meet its indicative annual range when making the report on the impact of climate change. In the absence of the amendment, the Government of the day could more easily ignore the good counsel of the independent committee and make a decision based on political challenges or even political expediency.

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Northavon)

Will the hon. Gentleman clarify a point? He is suggesting that if the Minister decides to ignore the committee, he must ask its advice on the implications of doing so. Is the Minister then bound to take notice of that advice? Is there a sanction if he fails to take notice of the committee’s advice on the implications of his ignoring it in the first place?

Gregory Barker (Conservative, Bexhill and Battle)

No. The process would inform debate in Parliament, as the matter would be one for Parliament. Debate in Parliament, and indeed in the country, would be better informed about the intended consequences of the Minister’s actions. It is likely that the Minister will wish not to reject out of hand what the committee advises but to trim. It is unlikely to be black or white. The Minister might say, “We’re going to have some difficulty with this. We’re not going to implement the Committee’s recommendations fully.”

On that basis, we will be facing a new scenario. It is thus important that the House of Commons and the public at large have access to the committee’s opinion, rather than leaving the impact of the revised strategy to further interpretation, especially by the Government of the day.

Martin Horwood (Liberal Democrat, Cheltenham)

I hesitate to differ with the hon. Gentleman on his own amendment, but it actually says:

“the Secretary of State shall consult the Committee”.

It does not mention Parliament.

Gregory Barker (Conservative, Bexhill and Battle)

I do not think that the hon. Gentleman understands. The Minister would consult the committee, but he would then have to report to Parliament. There would be a debate when he laid his budgets. There would still be five-yearly budgets, and there would still be debates in Parliament, but the Minister would have to consult the committee on the impact of his decision.

John Gummer (Conservative, Suffolk Coastal)

Surely my hon. Friend is drawing attention to something that is already a failing of the Environment Agency? There is a worry that when the Environment Agency’s advice is turned into ministerial propositions, it is often not tested against the Environment Agency. He is on to an important point: Parliament must be able to debate such matters with the knowledge of the committee’s judgment of the Government’s proposed changes. Parliament may well say, “It seems that the Government’s got it right,”—I am not suggesting that it will always be on the committee’s side—but we must know from an authoritative source what the effect of that change might be.

Gregory Barker (Conservative, Bexhill and Battle)

Absolutely spot on. Once again, my right hon. Friend puts it far more eloquently and articulately than I could hope to do. He has encapsulated the argument. We want to avoid a situation in which the committee has only one opportunity to give its opinion, which may be reinterpreted by the Minister. We argue that if the Government are willing to depart from the committee’s advice, they should have to explain to the public why they are doing so and be told authoritatively by the committee what effect that decision might have on the impact of climate change. We do not perceive this to be a problem in the short term, but as the life of the legislation will extend all the way to 2050, it needs to be foreshadowed in the Bill.

Martin Horwood (Liberal Democrat, Cheltenham)

I apologise for not saying when I first spoke how good it is to be serving under your chairmanship, Mr. Atkinson.

If we accept for a moment the hypothetical possibility that at some stage during the next 40 years there might be a Conservative Government, I suppose that it is wise to be cautious about their ability to wriggle out of certain commitments. It might be more likely that there will be a Liberal Democrat Government in that time scale. Who knows? The Leader of the Opposition might be from the Green party. If we accept that there will be Governments of different colours and opinions, it is wise to propose amendments that would make processes more watertight and transparent, so, in that sense, I support the spirit of the amendment and certainly accept the Conservative Front Benchers’ good intentions. However, I do not think that amendments Nos. 57 and 70 are as critically important as amendment No. 56.

In the circumstances that amendment No. 57 envisages—when the Government appear to be obstinately refusing to take account of the committee’s advice—it is likely that we would all be able to draw our own conclusions about the likely impact of climate change on the UK. If we do not, civil society and non-governmental organisations will do so in our stead.

Michael Weir (Scottish National Party, Angus)

I understand what the hon. Gentleman is saying and agree to a large extent, but amendment No. 57 proposes that the Secretary of State

“shall consult the Committee on the effect”.

Does not that give the committee the chance to say, when the Government do not accept its advice, that that will mean X, Y and Z? Given the argument about the importance of scientific evidence, it would be useful for Members of Parliament to have that before them when they debate the matter in the House.

Martin Horwood (Liberal Democrat, Cheltenham)

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point, but I do not think that that is necessary in the context of the Bill as a whole because the committee’s responsibility is to adjust the budget and look sector by sector at the impact regarding the future plans. It will still be mandated to only those targets and will make further advice based on the Government’s revised position, including their refusal to accept a target at that position. Therefore, the committee’s processes will reveal a lower opinion on the impact and certainly the steps that need to be taken. He might be right that that could be useful. It would certainly serve one purpose: to add to the embarrassment of any Government who were needlessly wimping out of tough decisions. In that respect, I have enough sympathy with the amendment to allow it to go forward.

John Gummer (Conservative, Suffolk Coastal)

I will try to resist the temptation to remark that some Committee members find it impossible to put party politics aside, even when they clearly do not arise, and that is always true of the Liberal Democrats, as one of their Members has shown regularly in this debate. That is sad, because this is an issue on which we ought to try as hard as possible to have a common view.

The reason why I hope that the Minister will find a reason to go at least some way towards this relates to the simple matter of the Environment Agency. I happen to have invented and set up the Environment Agency, so I know what I got wrong. I thought that I had set up an independent agency that would provide advice from which the public and Ministers could take their view. Over the years, the Environment Agency has come to provide advice that fits in with the budget that the Government set for things, and that is altogether different from the original intention.

In my constituency, for example, the Environment Agency advises the Government on coastal defence on the basis of the three-year budget that is put in place, even though the advice ought to be based on what might happen over the next 100 years. I had hoped that the Environment Agency, as is stated in legislation, would announce its advice in general on various scenarios so that the Government could then decide on a scenario, take responsibility for it, accept the agency’s independent advice on the cost, and then decide what had to be done and what the timetable would be.

That experience leads me to be concerned that the Minister and the committee, because of their good heartedness, believe that no one would behave differently from them. I feel rather bitter about that example because the result is not what I thought would happen. It would be helpful to make it clear that at the point at which Parliament is discussing that disagreement, there will be a real objective assessment of the difference between what would happen if we followed either the Climate Change Committee’s proposal or the Government’s alternative suggestion. This would not tie the Government any more. It does not make this less of an advisory committee; indeed, it makes it more of an advisory committee. However, the amendment does mean that if we were faced with such a situation in the House of Commons and the House of Lords, we could say, “This is what the committee says. It is not worth making this change; we have to tell the Government that really the cost of this is not satisfactory.” We would be able to debate the matter without trading disagreeable bits of science.

I do not want to enter into this issue too deeply, but one of the problems with the science is that it is rare that there is much agreement on a specific thing, although, for example, there is widespread agreement on a target of 80 per cent. plus. However, many bits of the science are much more complex, so arguments can be deployed on either side.

Parliament would do well to insist that it had the latest judgment of the committee on the Government’s proposals in its debates so that an informed decision could be taken. That would underline the role and the importance of Parliament.

I cannot imagine that this Government would not go back to the committee or that they would not tell people what the committee had actually said and pretend that it had said something else. However, I hope that they will be prepared to accept the amendment simply because it would do them no harm. It would not do any harm to the next Government, but it might ensure that at some time in the future, when times were tough just before an election, somebody would not try to do something through which Parliament was not given the truth.

Martin Horwood (Liberal Democrat, Cheltenham)

I want to ask the right hon. Gentleman a serious question, and also, as a flood-hit MP myself, pay compliment to his achievement in setting up the Environment Agency, which was appreciated last year. The body of work required to deliver on the amendment is substantial. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that by the time that work has been completed and the committee has delivered its conclusion on the likely impacts of the change, it might as well have undertaken the work of the reassessing the carbon budget?

John Gummer (Conservative, Suffolk Coastal)

That intervention worries me, because the sort of changes that we envisage are changes of considerable importance. If the hon. Gentleman is saying that Parliament would have to rubber-stamp or agree to the Government’s changes without those changes being satisfactorily tested against the knowledge and the science, that would be very dangerous. The committee would have to get a wiggle on, talking about wiggle in a different sense. It would have to do the work and provide the Government with a clear indication of the consequence of the decision to ignore its advice. That advice to the Government should be available to Parliament so that we can make a sensible decision. If the Government had got it right, no doubt we would support it, and if the Government had got it wrong, no doubt we would oppose it, but at least we would do so in full knowledge of the facts.

Phil Woolas (Labour, Oldham East and Saddleworth)

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle for moving the amendments. Let me make three points to back up my argument that the amendments are reasonable, but the process is covered by other clauses, particularly clauses 33 and 55.

My first point is the most important. There is a danger of us misunderstanding the relationship between UK emissions and temperature in the UK. The UK’s contribution accounts for 2 per cent. The change in the target is very important for the carbon budgets, and only in the context that I described could it take place. The link between the possible change in target and the potential change in temperature is less than the margin of error in the calculations in the first place.

We must always remember that our emissions do not dictate our average temperature. A constituent of the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, Deptford asked her the other day whether she could avoid climate change by going to her house in France, which rather crystallises the difficulty that some people have. I am not suggesting that the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle has that difficulty, and certainly not that the right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal has. It was just a point worth making.

Clause 33(2) states:

“Advice given by the Committee under this section must also contain the reasons for that advice.”

It is envisaged that the committee will put forward various public scenarios containing ranges, given that we are talking not about arithmetic but about science. As the months and years roll on, the United Kingdom climate impact programme, which we will publish in November, will play an important role. It is relevant practically to the Bill, and it will set out the United Kingdom’s best science to give us the range of scenarios based on parts per million and on temperatures.

Amendments Nos. 57 and 70 are already covered by the processes in the legislation, and because of the scenarios that I have described, the amendments would not achieve precisely or even generally what the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle seeks. I shall back up that point. Clause 4 already requires the Secretary of State to set out his reasons, and if he were to set the 2050 target at a level different from that which was recommended, there would still be transparency, because in those reasons, one would see the scenario with which he had differed from the committee. That is a long-winded way of saying that one would already be able to see the committee’s advice in the Secretary of State’s scenario, were it to differ from the committee’s.

John Gummer (Conservative, Suffolk Coastal)

What happens if the committee gives three scenarios and the Minister decides not to take any of them? The Bill does not say that he has to take any. He could take one that was mid-way between two of them. In other words, he could modify the scenario, and there would be no independent evaluation of what happens. Indeed, that is exactly my concern. In those circumstances, lay people—Ministers are usually lay people—would be able to say, “It looks more or less right. I think we can’t quite do that, but if we come in between them, it ought to be okay.” There might be very good reasons why that would not work satisfactorily, and I should be happier if I knew what the committee thought about, let us say, a mid-point between two of its scenarios.

Phil Woolas (Labour, Oldham East and Saddleworth)

I take the point, but in practice the committee’s publication of its advice and reasons would cover those potential circumstances. It would be like publishing a logarithm book. It would contain all the options. Because the relationship between UK emissions changes at the margin, remembering that we are talking about the cumulative amount of carbon in the air under the curve of the trajectory over that long period, the relationship between UK emissions and the global temperature is less than the margin of error in those scenarios, even on current knowledge.

There could not be any gap. Parliament would go bonkers and would turn down the affirmative resolution if the Secretary of State were to deviate from the accepted advice of the committee. I cannot see that arising, as the committee’s advice would be public. The UK climate impacts programme will be hugely important in setting the scenario, and will evolve. It is not conceivable that the Secretary of State would deviate from the target in a manner that was not based on the scenarios and premises of that programme’s report. I urge the Committee to consider achieving the hon. Gentleman’s reasonable objective through clauses 33 and 55.

Gregory Barker (Conservative, Bexhill and Battle)

I am grateful to the Minister for that explanation. It is considerably more sensible and rational that the disappointing partisan comments from the Lib Dems which, if anything, water down and weaken the Bill, rather than improve it.

I understand the Minister’s argument, but I do not agree that clauses 33 and 55 achieve exactly what my amendments propose. Amendments Nos. 57 and 70 would bring greater clarity and certainty to any future decision-making process. However, I appreciate that a further layer of the onion lies beneath those clauses. If it is intended to publish a range of scenarios, more information will be available than one would have anticipated from a straight reading of the Bill. On the understanding that that is how it is intended that the Bill be interpreted and the committee will function—

Phil Woolas (Labour, Oldham East and Saddleworth)

Has the hon. Gentleman considered that the devolved Administrations would have to be consulted? I am sure they would set out their reasons. That might give him further reassurance.

Gregory Barker (Conservative, Bexhill and Battle)

Yes, the devolved Administrations are an interesting element of the Bill. We will discuss their role later, particularly the ability of the Secretary of State, rather than the Prime Minister, to have a genuine locus in the decisions taken by the devolved Administrations. What we have is not perfect, but I take on board the Minister’s arguments and reassurances. On balance, and in the interests of forging consensus where possible, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Peter Atkinson (Conservative, Hexham)

It may be opportune to point out that we are about a third of the way through the Committee stage and have just finished clause 4. There are another 89 clauses and six schedules to deal with.

Clause 5

Anne McIntosh (Conservative, Vale of York)

I am mindful of your strictures, Mr. Atkinson. I refer the Minister to my earlier comments and to the point raised by the CBI. Clause 5 deals with the setting of five-year carbon budgets, on which we all agree, and the setting by 1 June 2009 of three consecutive carbon budgets for three-year periods. The CBI broadly supports that. The Federation of Small Businesses also supports it, but commented:

“The balance between economic growth and environmental legislation must be maintained because only by increased investment in research and development by the private sector will we find solutions to the problems of climate change.”

The CBI says that it wants a credible framework within which to work towards a low-carbon economy, and it believes that the interim target and rolling carbon budgets could help by giving the right balance of certainty and flexibility. It goes on to say that

“alongside the risks, the shift to a low carbon economy offers the UK a unique opportunity to develop innovative environmental technologies of the future and prosper in new, multi-billion-dollar world markets—but only if research funding is better co-ordinated and prioritised.”

Today, at Innovation, Universities and Skills questions, the Minister for Science and Innovation announced, in response to a question, a multi-million pound research programme for delivering the building of a low-carbon economy.

In the interests of joined-up government, can the Minister give the Committee an assurance today that he is going to satisfy the points raised by business, through the Federation of Small Businesses and the Confederation of British Industry, that targets will be set? His own final impact assessment, to which I referred in relation to previous clauses, and page 17 of the Stern review suggest that industrial sectors with high-energy intensive production exposed to international competition are probably going to face the most adverse impact on output and employment.

I am trying to support what the Minister is doing, but can he satisfy business that there are going to be measures whereby the environmental targets that he is expressing in the Bill are balanced by some degree of inducement to change behaviour, perhaps by using alternatives to fossil fuels, and encourage less intensive energy burning of fuels generally? In trying to change business behaviour through the carbon budgets imagined in clause 5, is it the Government’s intention to use the moneys that they have set aside to encourage businesses to change their practices in that way?

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Northavon)

I have a staggeringly brief question.

The first carbon budget will be set in 2009 for the five-year period 2008-12. It took years of study to work that one out. Will the Minister say more about why the first set of targets partly relates to history? Clause 5(1)(b) states that the duty of the Secretary of State is to ensure that the carbon account does not exceed this figure. He obviously cannot exercise that duty historically, because there are no levers he can pull. Why does the period not start in 2009?

Phil Woolas (Labour, Oldham East and Saddleworth)

I just thought of another reason why I was hoping for inspiration.

It might help if I point out to the Committee that about half of UK emissions are already covered by the European trading scheme. The big emitters are already there, so to respond the important question asked by the hon. Member for Vale of York about surety for business investment, we have some experience to build on. In a sense, it is a chicken and egg situation. A large part of the benefit of a carbon market is that it creates investment opportunities. The private sector is going to have to provide 85 to 90 per cent. of world finance for the low-carbon world economy, and the carbon markets are there to incentivise, as she accepts. Although one is never as sure as one would like to be, the great advantage to business of the Bill and the approach of five-year budgets is that they provide certainty. That we can talk about the position 15 years ahead and rolling on provides that certainty. That point has been supported by businesses in the consultation and during consideration of the draft Bill.

I will lay out briefly the reasons for the timetable, which will answer the question the hon. Member for Northavon asked. The first reason we chose that timetable is to dovetail with international time scales. The first budget period, 2008-12, runs concurrently with the first commitment period under Kyoto and the second phase of the European Union emissions trading scheme, so it makes sense from that point of view. I will not go into the reasons why five years is preferred to one—I think there will be some debate on that later.

There is another reason that is not in my speaking notes, but that is important. It is not a retrospective decision: we will take the measurements that were already reported under Kyoto and build those into the budget, but what starting in 2008 does is provide an absolute guarantee to business, to the markets and to everyone else that there has not been a political fix in the period. If we were to preannounce what the first budgetary period was going to be, everybody would shift their organisation in such a way as to get the best advantage. Theoretically—it could not happen because of the ETS—a company could switch off the power for a couple of weeks in winter to show a much lower baseline. That is a theoretical example, as I said, and I have nobody in mind, but that could be a problem and we want to avoid it. That is the answer to the hon. Gentleman’s question.

One of the strongest parts in the Bill—an aspect on which there is a very strong consensus—is found in this clause and the related clauses on the creation of carbon budgets. With our European partners, we are world leaders in this field, and I have been delighted to note the development of carbon budgets, or the research to prepare for them, elsewhere. I am pleased there is consensus. I hope I have answered hon. Members’ questions adequately.

Clause 6

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Northavon)

I beg to move amendment No. 31, in clause 6, page 3, line 37, leave out ‘26%’ and insert ‘35%’.

Here we go again. With your strictures in mind, Mr Atkinson, we will not repeat the debate about targets, but the amendment deals with the interim figure in the Bill. There are only two principal numbers in the Bill—60 and 26—and we are suggesting that 26 be replaced by 35. Why 35 specifically? It is because we asked, if 60 per cent. became 80 per cent. what would have to happen to 26 per cent.? It was no more sophisticated than that, but there are more fundamental questions at stake.

How should we view the trajectory for 2050? 2020 matters for a number of reasons. One is that it is the end point for a number of commitments, negotiations and promises at EU level and beyond. It matters also because of political accountability. Although I do not suppose that any current Ministers will be Ministers in 2050, or in senior positions—although you never know—it is at least credible that there is some political continuity over a decade, so having a realistic target for 2020 is more realpolitik than something decades hence.

There has been some discussion of whether we have a steady progression to 2050, and the 2020 target would be an interim target. There seem to be two counter-arguments to that. One is that there is “low-hanging fruit”: in other words, the easy carbon savings will be made first, so we ought to be able to get more than halfway to the 2050 target by halfway through the time period—2020 bisects the period between 1990 and 2050. The other counter-argument says, no, it takes time to innovate and for big capital projects to come on stream, so we should be more gentle with the earlier target. We have not, in our amendment, taken a view on that or changed the Government’s judgment on that. We have simply made a pro-rata change from 26 per cent. to 35 per cent. in the way that 60 per cent. was changed to 80 per cent.. So, assuming we end up with 80 per cent., via whatever mechanism, 35 per cent. has the same relationship to 80 per cent. that 26 per cent. had to 60 per cent.. We have not altered the judgment on whether it is easy or difficult to make headway in the earlier phases—that is a separate debate.

One difficulty we had in trying to prepare for this debate is the many different targets and objectives there are for 2020, with different baselines and different coverage. The Minister knows that there are targets for everything excluding the emissions trading scheme; targets based on 2005 figures; and targets that cover all greenhouse gases and some that cover only CO2. It is rather hard to get one’s head round which targets one is talking about and how they all fit together. I hope the Minister will give us a feel for how the number we end up with in clause 6 fits together with the various obligations that the UK has entered into and those that the EU has entered into, and with the Kyoto process.

The amendment is prompted in part by the debate on Second Reading, because it was repeatedly said, by a number of hon. Members both on this Committee and in the House, that we need to get on with the process. Although the Minister hypothesises doing nothing for 49 years and then suddenly doing it all in the final year, we all know that we have to get on with it. The interim staging post then becomes important as a signal of how serious we are. Our worry about leaving 26 per cent. in the Bill—I know the phrase used is “at least 26 per cent.”, but it could be “at least zero” and one could argue that we do not need to worry about it—is that if there is to be a number there, ’twere better that ’twere the right one.

To give a feel for what 26 per cent. would mean, the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research has looked at the current targets and has suggested that, under present targets, the total emissions we would be talking about over the period 2000 to 2050 would be 7.5 billion tonnes of carbon—massively in excess of the carbon budget of 4.6 billion tons that is compatible with the 2° C goal we have all been talking about.

To be frank, 35 per cent. is at the cautious end of the range. A steady reduction across the whole period, compatible with the budget we have just discussed, would need 38 per cent. by 2020. We certainly have not over-egged this—if anything, it is at the cautious end of the scale—but to accept the amendment would be an important indication of how seriously the problem is being taken.

We have been talking about the 2050 target, and there are whole sections of the Bill about how that target can be amended, but as far as I can see there is nothing specifically about how the 26 per cent. target can be amended. All the stuff about amendments and consultation and so on relates to clause 2. Yes, there will be carbon budgets, and they will imply particular levels of cut, but as far as I can see there is no provision for changing the 26 per cent. figure. [Interruption.] If I listen very carefully, I might hear where it is. Is there a danger that we will leave in statute a number we are all agreed is wrong? [Interruption.] If the Minister could get his official to hold up that number of fingers again, it would be very helpful. [Interruption.] Ah, clause 7. In principle, all the focus is clearly on the 60 per cent. or 80 per cent. figure, and it would be a worry if we left the 26 in, particularly if we thought we would end up with 80 per cent.

Nick Hurd (Conservative, Ruislip - Northwood)

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way just before he concludes. I have followed his argument with great interest and I welcome his emphasis on this target, because it is the target that will bite on today’s decision making. Will he clarify the economic consequences of moving from the 26 per cent. to 35 per cent. target? The Committee ought to get a sense of the cost attached to the Bill.

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Northavon)

As the hon. Gentleman knows, the final impact assessment provides those figures based on 60 per cent. and on 80 per cent., and 35 per cent. is the number consistent with 80 per cent. It is the stepping stone to 80 per cent. in the same way that 26 per cent. is the stepping stone to 60 per cent. All the analysis has been done by the Government on that basis.

The right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal rightly asked about the economic cost of not getting on with all of this. There is, as we have said, a huge potential benefit. To some extent, the argument for 35 per cent. is also the argument for 80 per cent., and I will not rehash all of that. There is, however, a separate set of arguments, first about the consistency of all the other 2020 goals we have entered into, secondly about the trajectory, and most of all about the importance of early progress. What matters is in the jargon “the area under the curve”, that is the cumulative emissions. If we are not quite serious that quite soon we are going to make big headway, then the goals for 2050 will not be worth having because we will already have done the damage.

John Gummer (Conservative, Suffolk Coastal)

Past sins are supposed to throw long shadows. One problem we face is that we have all experienced a long succession of energy Bills with no targets that could possibly relate to the ministerial experience of anybody on the Floor of the House. All the targets were, at the very least, for times when those who set them would be taking well earned rests in retirement homes. Some have pointed out that energy Bills originally contained more targets, but they were taken out on the “better not” principle—a Minister should not promise to achieve something by a time when he might still be a Minister, because somebody might draw his attention to it.

I understand that point because as a Minister of State at the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, I proposed a review of a decision about fishing off the coast of north-east England to take place five years after the decision, never thinking that I would come back as the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food when the review was due to take place. I recognise the temptation to avoid such situations.

I therefore start by being relatively sympathetic to the amendment. If I had not already made it clear that I feel we must have certainty about the full length of the thing, I might well have joined the Liberal Democrats in supporting the amendment. However, I hope the Minister will reassert the truth that everything we do immediately is worth a great deal more than everything we do in 10 years’ time and that everything we do in 10 years’ time is worth a great deal more than what we do in 20 years’ time. If it were not for the ancient sins, I would be relatively happy, because it is manifestly true that getting things right now has a huge advantage over leaving them until later.

This is a matter of morality, because to leave the next generation with a worse problem than we have would be peculiarly unpleasant. I hope the Minister will reassure us by saying clearly that it is the intention of the Government to use whatever time they have to do as much as they can as soon as possible. That will make it easier to deal with these problems as we go along.

Secondly, I hope the Minister will reassure me that there will be no temptation within the five-year periods to leave that which needs to be achieved until the end. I accepted his explanation for having five-year periods and supported the idea. For the reasons that I have mentioned, it is easier and better to do things earlier. If things are allowed to pile up, there will come a stage when the problem cannot be solved, rather like the debt that some of our constituents come to our constituency surgeries to resolve. I am sure other hon. Members agree that often in one’s surgery, one thinks, “If only this person had come to me three years ago, I could have done something about it. The debt is now so vast that nothing can be done.” I am terribly keen that the Minister should commit himself to saying that this Government will do as much as they can as early as possible to meet the interim target and the five-yearly budget arrangements.

Thirdly, many of us expect the advice from the Committee on Climate Change to have a big effect on the interim target. If so, will the Minister ensure that the Government respond rapidly to give industry the opportunity to understand how the decision-making process should be affected? I do not think that we can resile from targets that are based on science on the basis that we cannot manage them, because climate change does not stop. The target is there not because we can do it, but because we know what will happen if we do not meet that target. I hope that he will undertake that, should the target be significantly higher than the one in the Bill, he would take immediate action to spell out the Government’s view of what that would mean for personal action, governmental action and business action.

David Chaytor (Labour, Bury North)

The point made by the hon. Member for Northavon about the capacity in the Bill to amend the 2020 target is an important one, and I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will respond to that later. The basic principle that he is arguing for—that deeper cuts made earlier will be necessary and are more useful—is a sound one that all the scientific evidence supports and Lord Stern’s report endorsed.

I am deeply sceptical of our capacity to secure a cut of 35 per cent. by 2020. That is partly why, although I am instinctively sympathetic to the principle, I am nervous about suggesting that that target should be stated and supported at this stage. Of course, 2020 is conceivably the final year of the next Parliament but one. That is an important point to make, because it reminds us that this issue is about not just setting targets for the distant future, but matching targets to policies. Earlier I gently criticised the official Opposition and the disconnect between some of the ambitions for which they are arguing and the reality of their voting record. The same applies to the Liberal Democrats: there is a disconnect between their hugely ambitious efforts to support the highest targets and the reality of their support for particular policies when it comes to a vote in the House.

I touched on the point that there is nothing magic about 2020. Arguably, it would be more effective if we had not only a more stringent target for 2020, which I hope we will have, but an earlier target. The beauty of a target for 2015 is that it could well be the final year of the next Parliament, and therefore all parties would have to match up their support for a target with a set of principles, policies and mechanisms in their election manifesto. The argument for changing the target date from 2020 to 2015 is stronger than the argument for changing, at this stage, the current 2020 target of 26 per cent. to a higher target. Having a 2015 target, which nobody has yet suggested and there is no amendment on the order paper to that effect, would force each and every one of us and our parties, the leadership and the membership, to concentrate their minds on the kinds of policies necessary to deliver that target.

Finally, it seems that the argument I made in support of my proposal to move the 2050 target earlier may be the way forward. My argument was that there is a consensual way forward by reconsidering the date for the Report Stage of the Bill, together with the date that has been given to the Committee on Climate Change to produce its first report. We can find a way forward that everybody can agree upon if we bring forward the release of the Climate Change Committee’s advice to before the Report stage of the Bill.

Gregory Barker (Conservative, Bexhill and Battle)

The argument made by the hon. Member for Northavon has considerable merit. The substance of his argument, that early action is more effective and more cost-effective than delayed action is absolutely correct. That is the accepted wisdom—a point made crystal clear by Lord Stern and many others, and reinforced by my right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk, Coastal.

However, I also have considerable sympathy with the point made by the hon. Member for Bury, North that there is nothing magic about 2020. That is why in the past the Conservative party has expressed considerable support for the notion of rolling annual targets, because it is vital that each Parliament and every year we have a clear trajectory to follow. We should audit our progress regularly, so that we do not—for reasons of political expediency, bad luck or a change in economic circumstance, or for reasons entirely beyond the control of the Government of the day—find ourselves suddenly towards the end of the accounting period engaged in a desperate game of catch-up, when really there is no hope at all. Therefore, there is a risk that we do not meet that target, whether the 2020 target is a reduction of 26 per cent., or higher. To me, as a layman, there is considerable merit in having a higher target. I appreciate the arguments in favour of 35 per cent. Equally, I agree with the hon. Member for Bury, North that that is going to be a stretching target. However, it is one that we have to show real courage and vision in supporting, not only to do our part in the war against climate change, but to ensure that we are able to reap the opportunities that will come from the new low-carbon age.

We must ensure that UK plc is a real first mover and that we pioneer the new low-carbon economy. Our industry and commerce will be the first truly low-carbon economy in the world only if we move ambitiously on those markets. If we do that and seize the opportunities, we can turn this around. For all the problems that will necessarily arise as we try to wean ourselves off old-fashioned fossil fuels, there will be opportunities that will give rise to economic growth, new industries and new jobs. Look at the jobs created in Germany, which has a far more ambitious and effective policy of pursuing renewable energy. More than 200,000 new jobs have been created in the renewables industry there, and within the next couple of years that industry is set to overtake the German car manufacturing industry, which was one of the largest employers. It is important that we balance the opportunities and difficulties of meeting those stretching targets.

Although the Conservatives will support a yet more stretching target, and we will do everything we can to implement a more ambitious and dynamic policy to push forward industrial change to meet those near-term targets, we come back to our belief that those targets should be set by the Committee on Climate Change and that they should be testing. We should not underestimate the difficulty and complexity of working out the targets. It is therefore right that they should not be set on the say-so of politicians or as part of a bidding war between the parties about who is the greenest of them all. If we are going to carry the population with us, we have to show that the targets are based on sound scientific evidence. We have to show the working.

Although I would like the Climate Change Committee to be able to give its view on the targets before the Bill completes its passage through Parliament, I think it most important that the committee is the body that has the say-so on raising the figure. It is clear from clauses 7(1) and 6(1)(a) that there is a mechanism within the Bill to amend the 2020 figure, so that need not concern our Committee. Therefore, while not doubting for a moment that we need to be ambitious and to move early, I would oppose the amendment, as we believe that it should be the Climate Change Committee that informs any necessary move upwards.

Phil Woolas (Labour, Oldham East and Saddleworth)

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Northavon for tabling the amendment. When I saw the amendments, I thought that the debate on this one would be the most important, and as he rightly said, we have already debated its principles in Committee—thankfully.

I shall address the specific first and then the general. The specific point is contained in clause 7(1), and it is amplified in clause 8 in respect of the proposed duties on the Secretary of State and his relationship with the committee. This debate parallels the debate on the 60 per cent. and 80 per cent. long-term target, and the three points that the right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal made give us the reasons why. Greenhouse gases accumulate in the air, and some of them last for 100 years—CO2 being a case in point. Therefore, the second budgetary period must take into account the accumulated emissions of the previous period.

That situation is not like opening a window to let the gas drift away when the stove has been turned on but not lit; it does not work like that. It is more like a car engine running in a sealed garage: one has to turn the engine off quickly to have any hope of staying alive. That accumulation of gases is the point.

On the parallel with the level of debt, when a constituent is heavily in debt, it is in one sense easier than when they are less in debt. As the old adage goes, a £100 overdraft is my problem; a £1 million overdraft is the bank manager’s problem. Unfortunately, as the right hon. Gentleman said, there is no bankruptcy with greenhouse gas, so his point about rapidity and the point in the amendment tabled by the hon. Member for Northavon are absolutely right. The rapidity of the measures will build on the existing European trading scheme and climate change agreements. There is also the carbon emissions reduction target scheme, as well as the carbon reduction commitment, which starts in 2010 and will have a profound effect on attitudes.

Those schemes herald the way for the Budget, and as the Chancellor has said, following the committee’s advice, the carbon budgets will be announced in spring next year. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, but I shall not go into the detail about why the Government do not like the 35 per cent. target at this stage. It was debated significantly during pre-legislative consultation and in the other place. Indeed, to try to satisfy that figure, the Government amended the clause in response to similar points made in the other place.

The hon. Gentleman, however, asked an important question about how the figure fits into the European and international contexts. We have picked the range before us to fit the European context. At least 26 per cent. is itself a stretching target for the country, but it is consistent with the European Union’s greenhouse gas target for 2020—whether the current 20 per cent. reduction, or a 30 per cent. reduction should the EU be able to offer it as an incentive to the rest of the world for an international agreement.

We have examined the trajectory to ensure that it works in both European scenarios, and indeed it will do so consistent with the long-term target. The hon. Gentleman will now ask me about the 80 per cent. figure, and he will have a fair point.

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Northavon)

I would be grateful if the Minister answered a question that I have not yet asked, but this is the question I was going to ask: if the EU goes to 30 per cent. because there is global co-operation and the UK contribution is 26 per cent., will we not underperform relative to the rest of the EU, or is he saying that we would then bump up our 26 per cent. target to 32 per cent. or whatever? Is that implicit in what he says?

Phil Woolas (Labour, Oldham East and Saddleworth)

We would then have to look at the trajectory. I hope that that does not sound like wriggling. That is why we thought the point made in the other place was valid. The bigger consideration is that if we change from CO2 only to greenhouse gases it would affect current projections. A 26 per cent. reduction in CO2 emissions could reduce the UK’s emissions of the basket of greenhouse gases, including CO2, to around 32 per cent. below 1990 levels by 2020. That is a potential change that I believe would be beneficial.

To answer the question, we believe that that is consistent, but it would have to take into account three factors: the long-term goal, tightening the target by including all gases and the trajectory we would take in the first budget period. That in turn would have a consequence for the second budget. In short, we do not think that 35 per cent. is realistic, so we have said “at least 26 per cent.”, but we want the independent Climate Change Committee to look at it and advise us.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bury, North made the point about the practicality of 35 per cent. He also made an important point about the length of the targets period. We are talking about 2020; that is one option we have committed to. The crucial decision to be taken, however, is on the period covered by the post-Kyoto agreement. In my view, there is a danger that that period is too long, and to get the early action that we have talked about we may need to look at a different trajectory. The point of all this is that the area under the curve, as the Americans describe it, is what matters.

The hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle made a point about annual targets. We are coming on to that. In practice, once the five-year period is set, it would not take a journalist too much trouble—even our journalists can operate a calculator—to divide by five and work out what the annual measurement of progress would be. He said “measurement” as well as “progress”.

Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat, Northavon)

I appreciate the Minister’s style and conciliatory approach. I was concerned when, towards the end of his comments, he said he thought 35 per cent. unrealistic. Given that he said this morning that 80 per cent. is the Department’s internal working assumption, it worries me that 35 per cent. is deemed unrealistic, as 35 per cent. is to 80 per cent. what 26 per cent. is to 60 per cent. Is he therefore end-loading it, as the right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal suggested?

Is it the position of the Government that although we are not going to get to 35 per cent. by 2020, we are working under the assumption that we will need 80 per cent. by 2050? A huge amount of late effort would then be needed. How well does that sit with what we have all agreed is the need for early effort? That troubles me somewhat. There is no great point in repeating the same issues we have already discussed. Suffice it to say that it is good to get on the record the considered opinion around the Committee of the importance of early action.

I was interested in the suggestion made by the hon. Member for Bury, North that we also need to look at targets before then. I suppose they are implicit in the carbon budget process. Whether 26 per cent. or 35 per cent. bites any more than any other carbon budget number does—it is not obvious to me that it does—there is a duty to hit the carbon budget all the time once it is in place.

I am slightly troubled by what the Minister says, but I am not sure that a Division would achieve anything at this point. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Clause 7

Phil Woolas (Labour, Oldham East and Saddleworth)

The clause mirrors the requirements of clause 3, about which I spoke earlier, in setting out the circumstances in which 2020 targets and any post-2050 target may be amended. As before, the application of the clause is limited to specific circumstances to ensure that the legislation provides as much certainty as possible while retaining the flexibility to respond to the latest developments, such as changes in scientific knowledge and the international context, which affect the basis of our reduction target. With that in mind, we consider that allowing changes to the 2020 target or the future post-2050 target to be made through secondary legislation provides that for that process.

The potential inclusion of other greenhouse gases or emissions from international aviation or international shipping also needs to be taken into account, as either of those could significantly affect the achievability of the targets. It is therefore right that, in those circumstances, we should have that flexibility.

Anne McIntosh (Conservative, Vale of York)

I have a comment to make to the Minister. I notice that the Government intend to introduce such changes through debate under the affirmative resolution procedure in both Houses. There is a little concern that throughout the Bill—clause 7 reflects this—there is a general enabling power. Of course, the devil will be in the detail.

I alert the Minister to the fact that there is a general concern out there; perhaps more detail could have been included. We do not wish to detract from the flexibility of any future Government considering this, but we put down a marker that perhaps there is too much dependence on Orders in Council, albeit preceded by debate under the affirmative resolution procedure. Perhaps more could have been included in the Bill.

Clause 8

Phil Woolas (Labour, Oldham East and Saddleworth)

The clause requires the Secretary of State to meet certain requirements before either setting a post-2050 target, as provided for in clause 6, or amending the 2020 target or a post-2050 target under clause 7. It mirrors the consultation requirements set out in clause 4 relating to changes to the 2050 target.

Anne McIntosh (Conservative, Vale of York)

On a point of clarification, under what procedure will such orders be put before the House? I do not see the Bill specifically saying that they will be introduced under the affirmative resolution procedure in both Houses. Is that in the Bill or am I just not seeing it?

Phil Woolas (Labour, Oldham East and Saddleworth)

The hon. Lady is not wrong, but her point is covered by clause 7. It is the same procedure.

Clause 11

David Maclean (Conservative, Penrith and The Border)

I beg to move amendment No. 38, in clause 11, page 6, line 19, at end insert—

‘( ) rises in global temperature,

( ) the impact of climate change on world biodiversity,

( ) loss of world forests (with particular reference to rain forests),’.

Peter Atkinson (Conservative, Hexham)

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following: Amendment No. 40, in clause 14, page 7, line 29, at end insert—

‘(3A) The report must explain how the proposals and policies set out in the report will affect—

(a) global average temperature,

(b) loss of world biodiversity, and

(c) loss of world rainforests.’.

New clause 9—Duty to report on impact of climate change on biodiversity

‘(1) It is the duty of the Secretary of State to lay before Parliament an annual report on the impact of the UK’s carbon budgeting on—

(a) UK biodiversity,

(b) global biodiversity, and

(c) world rainforests.

(2) So far as the report relates to proposals and policies of the Scottish Ministers, the Welsh Ministers, or a Northern Ireland department, it must be prepared in consultation with that authority.

(3) The Secretary of State must send a copy of the report to those authorities.

(4) The first report under this section must be laid before Parliament and the devolved legislatures not later than 30th September 2009.

(5) Each subsequent report must be laid before Parliament not later than 30th June in the year in which it is made.’.

Amendment No. 42, in title, line 8, after ‘produced;’, insert

‘to make provisions for the reporting of the impact on biodiversity of carbon offsetting measures;’.

David Maclean (Conservative, Penrith and The Border)

Although I have tabled amendments to the clause and have attempted to scatter other amendments across other parts of the Bill, they all basically say or ask the same thing.

Clause 11(2) says that

“the Secretary of State in coming to any decision under this Part relating to carbon budgets”

has to take

“scientific knowledge about climate change”

into account. I want to insert three proposals that would make it absolutely clear that among the scientific knowledge the Secretary of State had to take into account would be rises in global temperature, the impact of climate change on world biodiversity and the impact in relation to the loss of world forests.

In relation to other parts of the Bill, where the Prime Minister is under a duty to report on climate change, I say that he should ensure that the report includes impact on world forests, biodiversity and temperature rises. Why am I doing that? What concerns me? What concerns me is the fact that this is a highly technical Bill. It is a pretty boring Bill. It is almost like the EU treaty—totally inexplicable to outsiders. One would think that it is understood only by accountants. Like the EU treaty, the people may go one way, yet the leaders carry on.

I worry that when the Prime Minister comes to make a report—a change may be made, and the report may have to be made by the Secretary of State—and things are taken into account, if one is merely dealing with some of the arguments that we have had this morning, which are interesting but esoteric arguments about 60 or 80 per cent., I am afraid that the people in the pubs in Hexham and Penrith are going to lose interest. They will not understand the relevance of it all.

As I have been reading about this subject, I have discovered that climate change is infinitely important to our survival. Yet, from my research on the effects of climate change on England, it does not seem very frightening. Why do we have this complex Bill? Why are we setting targets that may have enormous costs for the economy and be difficult to implement? Why are we doing it when the research into the consequences for England suggests it would simply mean a little bit of warming? There would be flash floods and more violent storms—that would not be good. We are likely to have water shortages and hosepipe bans and, of course, if sea levels rose, large parts of lowland England and Scotland, and Wales too, no doubt, would be underwater. I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk, Coastal, would not want his home to become a new Lindisfarne; a new Holy island in Suffolk. So, there are serious consequences of rises in water levels.

We would have hot spells—my research suggests that we would probably get more train lines buckling in the heat, but we would probably not have frozen points in winter. It is difficult to see things of earth-shattering importance that will happen because of climate change in England. Yet we know that the consequences of climate change can be absolutely disastrous for the survival of the whole human race, and for the survival of the human race in this country.

If there is a 2°C rise in global temperature, we will find a large decline in global freshwater resources, decreased crop yields in the world, widespread hunger and our seas will become more acid. There will be a loss of biodiversity, the mass extinction of some species and extreme weather conditions around the world. There will be widespread droughts around the world, a near-total loss of coral reefs, and perhaps the start of the melting of the Greenland ice sheet. There will be a northwards expansion of the spread of tropical diseases such as malaria, and in this country we will get more non-indigenous species. Some of those species may be benign, but some may be quite malignant, such as our grey squirrels in Hexham and Penrith.

We will see the potential extinction of arctic species, including the polar bear. The polar bear is one of those wonderful icons. My secretary gives me an awful ear bashing in Portcullis House if I go out and leave the lights on, because she is trying to save the polar bear. That is something that has stuck in the public conscience. Much as polar bears are important, as I was trying to say on Second Reading, there are more important species than that, although they are not as cuddly—although I am sure that polar bears are not that cuddly—and do not look as friendly.

A couple of weeks ago I went to Kew to do a little bit of background research before serving on this Committee, and one of the things that scared me in the wonderful greenhouses at Kew was the tiny number of species of insects that pollinate in the world. We know about bees, but there are other insects that pollinate around the world. If we lose some of those rather unsexy little bugs and species, the world starves. Nothing pollinates in future.

John Gummer (Conservative, Suffolk Coastal)

Does my right hon. Friend agree that the Government’s current indifference to the fate of the indigenous bee and their failure to provide for its protection from disease, shows how easy it is for these things to go unnoticed? In fact, the bee and similar insects provide an enormously important fundamental ecological job.

David Maclean (Conservative, Penrith and The Border)

That is absolutely true. The job they do is absolutely vital, and I suspect that my right hon. Friend is referring to varoa and disease control. That is not a route that I wish to go down now, but no doubt the Minister will defend the Government’s record on that in due course.

That was my summary of the research on what happens with a 2ºC rise in world temperatures. If we get a 4º to 5ºC rise in due course, we will get drastically reduced crop yields around the world, and mass starvation. Diarrhoea, which is a huge killer in the developing world, will expand rapidly and kill millions more in Africa. The rise in temperature would lead to widespread species extinction and huge desertification. There would be a wholesale collapse of the Amazon ecosystem, and the complete loss of all arboreal and Alpine ecosystems. We would have the melting of the Antarctic ice sheet, and in Greenland, we would see more melting of the ice sheet with huge rises in sea levels.

When we say “huge” rises in sea levels we do not need to talk about 10, 20 or 30 ft; a 3 ft—1 m—rise in sea levels puts half of Bangladesh underwater, and 14 million people displaced or homeless, as well as having an impact on our own country. Other parts of the world would have no agricultural production whatsoever. In addition, there is a danger that global warming could trigger further releases of methane in Siberia and the Arctic tundra. Although this is more speculative, if we had a 5ºC rise, some scientists say that that there is a 50 per cent. chance that the world’s ocean circulation systems would cease to operate, or may close down. There will be even more horrific effects that I have not quoted to the Committee.

If only half of the incidents that I have just described are true, I want the Government and the Prime Minister to put that in every ruddy report that is produced and to refer to it. We must excite the imagination of the British public into realising how serious the matter is. With all due respect, vital arguments about 60 per cent. or 80 per cent. targets do not bring the consequences home to the public. That is why I want specific mention in the reports and in the Bill of the effects of temperature rise I want the Secretary of State to acknowledge that when considering scientific knowledge.

Why do I want to see the tropical rain forests mentioned? What has that to do with the price of fish in England? It has a tremendous amount to do with our own survival in England. Rain forests are now receiving a level of international attention not seen since I was at the Earth sum in Rio in 1992. The Stern report—and thank goodness that the Government are to keep Stern working for them—showed the important link between forests and climate. This is a climate change Bill, and one fifth of the total annual carbon emissions now come from land use changes, especially tropical deforestation. In fact, cutting down the tropical forests is releasing more carbon into the atmosphere than the whole of international shipping and aircraft combined. That is why, if we want to do something about this, although we need to tackle our own industries, cars, pollution, and increasing carbon emissions, unless we are doing things to save the rain forest—perhaps in carbon trading, which is covered in later parts of the Bill—we will not succeed in meeting our climate change objectives and we will lose those precious forests.

Rain forests continue to be destroyed at a pace exceeding 80,000 acres per day—32,000 hectares per day. I cannot imagine something on that scale; that is horrendous: 1.5 acres of rain forest are being lost every second. Rain forests once covered 14 per cent. of the Earth’s land surface; they now cover a mere 6 per cent. If we continue at the present rate of destruction, the remaining rain forests will be consumed in fewer than 40 years. The current world rain forest cover of 2.5 million sq miles sounds pretty big—it is the size of about 48 contiguous states in the United States, representing 6 per cent. of the world’s surface—but the rate at which it is disappearing is frightening. If we are losing 13 million hectares of forest land every year, adding to that huge amount of carbon in the atmosphere, the rain forests will no longer be able to be the lungs of the earth, performing that vital role of soaking up carbon and giving us clean air, oxygen and water in return.

As the rain forests disappear, we are not just losing trees or the ability to soak up carbon and produce oxygen. It is not just a large bit of greenery. The most important thing is that, as the rain forests disappear, we are losing the species in them; we are losing the fauna and flora, the insect life and the animals. With them goes potential cures for life-threatening diseases. I am told by my researchers that there are currently 121 prescription drugs sold worldwide which come from plant-derived sources. While 25 per cent. of western pharmaceuticals are derived from rain forest ingredients, less than 1 per cent. of these tropical trees and plants are being tested by scientists. So 25 per cent. of the drugs we use to treat illnesses come from rain forest ingredients and we have examined only 1 per cent of those ingredients. Yet we are going to continue cutting down the rest of the rain forests. Where on earth will we get the raw material to make the drugs that will save human life in the future? I have never been a flat-earther, nor have I the reputation of being a great herbalist, but I have always believed that part of the solution to human ills lay inside the sealed globe we call the world. It does not lie in the synthesis of new chemicals by chemical companies, it lies in using the products and ingredients we have. Opium is a perfect example. Many other solutions to the ills and diseases we face are already out there, possibly deep in the ocean, in the jungles of the Amazon and Papua New Guinea, in fauna, in flora, and in animal species. If we destroy them, we can never get them back.

As I said earlier, with a huge amount of effort, we could lower the world temperature. We can reverse climate change. We cannot bring back the millions of species which may be destroyed if those forests are cut down and burned. Experts estimate that we are losing 137 plant, animal and insect species every day, due to rain forest deforestation. That equates to 50,000 species a year. I do not mean that we are losing 50,000 of one animal, or one beastie, or one insect, but 50,000 different species. That is absolutely frightening. Deforestation of tropical rain forests has a global impact through species extinction. We will see the loss of important ecosystem services and renewable resources and the reduction of carbon sinks.

I want this in the Bill so that the people of the United Kingdom—and everyone in Penrith—can see that the loss of the rain forest affects our human health in this country. It does not just affect the Indians who might be living in the forest, or some of the animals and wildlife there—although it would be tragic if we lost some of that wildlife, and, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk, Coastal would say, it would also be immoral—it affects us. It is in our own vital life-preserving interest that we save those things. If we could spell out more of the biodiversity consequences in the report that the Prime Minister will be asked to produce, we might be able to engage the British public so that they realise that, goodness me, this is a very serious thing. That would have more impact than just talking about carbon at 80 and 60 per cent., important though that is.

We know that faunas are critical to regulating the climate. We know that more than half the world’s estimated 10 million species of plants, animals and insects live in the tropical rain forest. A fifth of the world’s fresh water is in the Amazon basin. Also, although I would be highly critical of the food miles, in any huge supermarket these days—Sainsbury in Pimlico, or any other big market—we see ranges of fruit and vegetables that we did not even know existed five, 10 or 20 years ago. A total of 80 per cent. of the developed world’s diet originated in the tropical rain forest. Its gifts and the wonderful foods it has provided include avocados, coconuts, figs, oranges, lemons, grapefruit, bananas, guavas, pineapples, mangos, tomatoes, vegetables, corn, potatoes, rice, winter squash, yams, black pepper—I am getting quite hungry now. There are many more but I will not bore the Committee by reading a huge shopping list of food from Tesco or Sainsbury’s.

At least 3,000 fruit species are found in the rain forest alone. We use only about 200 of those in the western developed world, whereas the Indians in the rain forest consume about 2,000 different species of fruit and vegetable. Who knows what solutions for the illnesses that we may face lie in those fruits and vegetables? People with my condition are told to eat a lot more oily fish. I love fish, but I hate oily fish. Initially, I did not believe that it was beneficial, but I certainly find it slightly beneficial in tackling multiple sclerosis. I think, in my little mind, that if that bit of oily fish can help me in a minor way, what else that could save people is lying in those rain forests, which are being cut down at the rate of 80,000 hectares a day?

The US National Cancer Institute has identified more than 3,000 plants that are active against cancer cells. Seventy per cent. of those plants are found in the rain forest, and 25 per cent. of the active ingredients in today’s cancer-fighting drugs come from organisms found only in the rain forest. I am told that vincristine—I shall pass that name on to Hansard later—which is extracted from the rain forest plant the Madagascar periwinkle, is one of the world’s most powerful anti-cancer drugs. It has dramatically increased the survival rate for acute childhood leukaemia since its discovery, and that discovery was linked directly to the rain forest rather than to the millions of pounds spent by multinational chemical companies. That is why I want rain forests to be specifically mentioned and flagged up. We have a chance to excite the British public with the wonderful reasons why we are backing the Bill. We can terrify them—legitimately—with the consequences of cutting down the rain forests, and we can tell them why climate change, which is a terribly boring term, matters.

The final thing that I want to flag up to the Government relates to forests. We cannot discuss biodiversity without rain forests, and we cannot discuss rain forests without biodiversity. I want biodiversity to be mentioned specifically in the Bill because, as I said earlier, everyone sees that biological extinction is the most critical global environmental change that we face, because it cannot be reversed. Aaron Bernstein, a doctor at Harvard medical school and one of the authors of the book, “Sustaining Life: How Human Health Depends on Biodiversity”, has stated:

“When we harm nature, we are harming ourselves...few people realise that our health is directly tied to the health of the natural world”,

The current extinction crisis is a serious threat to humanity that is equal to, if not greater than, climate change.

As I have said, although the Earth’s rain forests cover only 6 per cent. of its surface, they harbour 50 per cent. of all known life on this planet. The estimated number of creatures that inhabit the tropical rain forest is so great—between 5 million and 50 million species—that it is almost incomprehensible. The sheer range of numbers alone is mind-boggling. If the best experts—the Attenboroughs of this world—can calculate only that it is between 5 million and 50 million, it shows how little we have actually explored life on Earth. If we do not understand it, for goodness’ sake, we must not destroy it first.

Our western forests are good things, too, but whereas half a dozen tree species or fewer make up 90 per cent. of the trees that dominate western forests, a typical rain forest, I am told, may have more than 480 tree species in a single hectare, which means not 480 trees but 480 different tree species. Similarly, a single bush in the Amazon may contain more species of ant than the entire British isles. Rain forest biodiversity is not a haphazard event, but the result of a series of unique circumstances. Unfortunately, every year approximately 27,000 species of animal and plant life disappear from our planet. We hear about big cuddly animals if they are in danger of extinction, but not about the fauna, flora, bits of moss, trees and bushes. Those things may seem utterly unimportant, boring and not sexy, but they may contain chemicals that are vital for our survival. Scientists estimate that there are between 3 million and 30 million species of plants, animals, fungi, bacteria and so on. Only 1.4 million have been identified so far, and we risk destroying the rest. Up to 30 per cent. of all species on earth could vanish by 2050 due to unsustainable human activities—mainly deforestation. Medicines are just a small part of the role that biodiversity plays in human well-being. Without beneficial insects, most of the land ecosystems in the world would collapse, and a good part of humanity would perish with them. We have already discussed bees and other insects, but that is an absolutely crucial point.

I will not bore the Committee for much longer, because I only want to make two points. I have made my first point on biodiversity, and my second point concerns garbage—I hope that colleagues can spot the difference. I will conclude with the cone snail. I am not sure who has heard of the cone snail—I had not heard of it before I started my research. Cone snails live only in coral reefs, and at least a third to a half of all reefs are in danger of dying off due to a combination of disease, pollution and climate change. What have cone snails got to do with anything? The first breakthrough in pain medication in years has come from those little snails. I have no idea what they look like or how big they are—I presume that they are tiny or even microscopic. Some 33 per cent. of terminal cancer and HIV patients for whom the strongest opiates were ineffective are now pain free thanks to a pain-blocking peptide from cone snail venom. I have no reason to disbelieve that point—no one could make it up—which I discovered during my research. The cone snail is a tiny little thing in the coral reef, yet people are making a highly powerful medicine—it is more powerful than opium—from a peptide that it produces for the treatment of cancer patients. That in itself is justification for saving the coral reefs. We have to save the coral reefs, if only to get that material from the cone snail for cancer and HIV patients. How do we save the coral reefs? The answer is by reducing the global temperature.

I do not want to live in a world where we have only met our carbon targets. We could meet 60, 80, 90 or 100 per cent. of our carbon targets, but that would be irrelevant because—as the Minister has said—what is important are the measures that we take to meet the ultimate target. There will be no point to a society in which we have managed to meet our carbon targets, if we have lost all the rain forests. Make no doubt about it, we can meet the carbon targets, even if we cut down every forest—it would be much more difficult, but we could do it. The danger is that we would lose millions of species that we do not even know about yet that have the potential to improve or save human life. We would lose the tiny insects, bugs and creepy crawlies—“the wee beasties” as my old mother used to say—that are so vital to our ecology and economy. I do not know what they are—nobody in the Committee knows. Nobody knows what is in the rain forests in Brazil, Papua New Guinea and elsewhere, which we are losing at a rate of knots.

I am certain that the Minister will tell me not to worry about scientific knowledge on climate change. He will say, “That’s all in there David. We’ll be thinking about that.” I am merely saying that my amendment would not significantly change the Bill. It would not cause damage, and the Government would not have to impose a new target. It would merely signal what the Government will probably report on anyway. It will make the Bill slightly sexier, and slightly easier for people like me—virgins in carbon matters—to understand. It will make it easier to get the message home in the pubs of Hexham and Penrith, and around the country. People will not buy in to the boring bits of climate change, such as the stuff about dustbins in clauses 69 and 70, unless we create reasons. If my proposals were implemented, the Government would have to spell out why biodiversity and rain forests are so vital to the survival of the human species.

Martin Horwood (Liberal Democrat, Cheltenham)

I warmly congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on his extraordinarily eloquent speech and on his amendments and new clause. He repeatedly apologised for potentially boring the Committee, but I was not bored—I was inspired by his brilliant contribution.

My only small quibble is that the references to the rise in global temperature in the amendments would be accommodated in almost any review of the scientific evidence on climate change. It is difficult to see how such reviews could otherwise be conducted.

The right hon. Gentleman’s references to biodiversity and world forests were spot on. He has revealed a rather strange aberration in the Bill. Clause 11 states that carbon budgets will overwhelmingly be set on economic and social criteria. We all love the Stern report, which is an important document that changed the terms of the debate on climate change in this country and that has been influential worldwide. After the Stern report, it has become almost axiomatic that the cost of doing nothing about climate change will be economically greater than the cost of doing something about it, especially if we act quickly.

As the right hon. Gentleman rightly pointed out, the economic justification is not the only justification for acting on climate change. Even if there were no dramatic economic costs, it is important to protect the biodiversity of the planet from the impact of climate change. The figures on biodiversity are truly alarming. The right hon. Gentleman gave many of them, and he went into great detail. The UN millennium ecosystem assessment reported in 2005 that approximately 60 per cent. of the ecosystem services that it examined are being degraded or used unsustainably. Those include

“fresh water, capture fisheries, air and water purification, and the regulation of regional and local climate, natural hazards and pests.”

The latest red list of threatened species in 2007 shows that one in four of the world’s mammals, one in eight of its birds, one third of all amphibians and 70 per cent. of the world’s assessed plants are in jeopardy. The UK biodiversity action plan, for which the Government should take due credit, has identified 1,149 species and 65 habitats as priorities for conservation in the UK alone.

On forests, it has been estimated that about half of the mature tropical forests that once covered the planet have been felled. That is between 750 million and 800 million hectares out of the original 1.5 billion to 1.6 billion hectares that once covered the planet. Deforestation probably contributes to 20 per cent. of world carbon emissions. The situation is extremely grim. The most obvious and simple impact is on the beauty and diversity of life on Earth, and there is a moral and a spiritual reason for trying to protect our biodiversity on that basis. As the right hon. Gentleman rightly pointed out, there are massive impacts in terms of the potential for science to discover new medicines, treatments and painkillers.

Most importantly, there is an enormous impact on the ability of the world to feed itself. The right hon. Gentleman light-heartedly mentioned the price of fish. I assure him that the price of fish will be massively impacted. In February, the United Nations environment programme report pointed out that all the major world fisheries are at some risk of complete collapse within decades if the combination of overfishing, climate change and pollution is allowed to proceed unchecked. It pointed to the fact that 2.6 billion people derive most of their protein from fish. The impacts of such a loss of biodiversity are almost incalculable.

As the right hon. Gentleman rightly said, if the ecosystems start to collapse, that is a feedback mechanism that will in turn make climate change even worse. The threat to the Amazonian rainforest, as highlighted in the Stern report, is such that it would enter irreversible collapse if we allow the global temperature to rise by only 2° C above pre-industrial levels. That should focus our attention. It is right that biodiversity should be a prominent concern in the Bill, and the amendments deserve our warm support. It is a matter of some embarrassment to me that we did not spot that enormous omission before and were not responsible for tabling the amendments. I warmly congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on doing so.

Anne McIntosh (Conservative, Vale of York)

I, too, congratulate and pay tribute to my right hon. Friend for his amendments, research, the passion and eloquence with which he spoke and for spotting an omission from the Bill. May I also establish my eco-warrior and environmental claims, which go back to about the age of nine, 10 or 15?

The Committee may recall that Professor David Bellamy made his name as a lecturer in botany at Durham university. One of the great campaigns that he supported at that time, but which, regrettably, was not successful, was the drive to protect the blue gentian, an alpine flower that grows in this country in only one part of the north of England. This is not a private Committee meeting, but I do not mind sharing this story with the Committee. I was brought up in that place, known as Upper Teesdale, which remains relatively unspoiled, compared to the Lake district.

At that time, it was proposed that part of Upper Teesdale should be flooded to create a reservoir to help people further downstream on the River Tees, and that plan went ahead. Professor Bellamy and those who supported him failed to protect the blue gentian. Outside Austria and Switzerland, that flower grows only in Upper Teesdale, so there are few left. The tragedy is that the water that was damned by the reservoir was never needed further downstream. I hope we can all learn from that.

The amendments and new clause tabled by my right hon. Friend propose that the Secretary of State should take into account such matters when making decisions about carbon budgets and the duty to report on them. My right hon. Friend seeks to amend clause 11 so that rises in global temperature, the impact of climate change on world biodiversity and loss of world forest, with particular reference to rain forests, would be added to the list of matters to be taken into account. He wishes to put a duty on the Secretary of State to lay an annual report before Parliament on the impact of biodiversity loss on the UK and on meeting our carbon budgets and for the theme to be included in the title of the Bill.

The amendments relate to clauses 11 and 14 and the title of the Bill. It is interesting that the much-flaunted theme of sustainable development is often described as a three-legged stool, the legs being a sustainable environment, a sustainable society and a sustainable economy. It is claimed that, without one of the legs, the stool would fall over. The Minister might want to comment on why no reference is made to the impact on the environment in clauses 11 and 14 and in the title.

The case for amending the clauses and the title in order to consider the loss of the world’s forests and the impact of climate change on biodiversity is a noble one, and my right hon. Friend is right to express his concern about those vital issues. I share his mother’s concern for the wee beasties, and was moved by his reference to the cone snail, of which I confess I was not aware. I hope that it can be protected and can continue to be used for the purposes he described.

The World Bank estimates that approximately two thirds of tropical forest is under moderate to high pressure from agricultural expansion and timber industry expansion. My right hon. Friend spoke at some length about the impact on the rain forest, but I am sure he would wish to draw attention to previous incidents at Carlisle in Cumbria and at Boscastle in Devon, and incidents during last summer’s floods which, although they caused devastation elsewhere, were particularly acutely felt across Yorkshire and the Humber and the north Lincolnshire regions. Agricultural land was lost for part of the summer, as were many crops. It is important to see the issue in terms of UK losses as well.

The Minister is aware that prime agricultural land is increasingly encroached upon by the Government’s ambitious plans to build 3 million houses by 2020 and by their separate proposal for eco-towns. In considering the amendments, it is important to look at the impact that those Government plans will have on our own biodiversity.

A recent report for McKinsey estimates that the world could avoid 3.3 gigatons of CO2 equivalent in annual emissions from tropical deforestation by 2030 if we were able to price the carbon stored in these rain forests at less than €40 per tonne of carbon dioxide emissions. Such an analysis must make us seriously consider the benefits of avoiding rain forest destruction not purely as the morally correct thing to do, as my right hon. Friend argued, but because the value of the ecosystem services that those forests provide is immeasurable. If, in the years ahead, we continue to lose the rain forests at the current rate, we can almost certainly give up hope of keeping warming under 2°C.

I warmly welcome my right hon. Friend’s aspiration for biodiversity and deforestation issues to be brought to the heart of our carbon reporting procedure, which is as an eminently sensible idea, and especially for them to be taken into account in setting the carbon budgets in the annual report and in the long title of the Bill. I look forward with great interest to hearing from the Minister why she believes that there was no place for the environment in the original drafting of the Bill.

John Gummer (Conservative, Suffolk Coastal)

I shall be brief. We were all moved by the words of my right hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border in introducing the amendment. I hope very much that the Minister will not say that those matters are implicit in the Bill, but will understand why a specific reference is so important. The reason is that it is extremely easy for these things to be forgotten because they do not happen to be the fashion of the time. I remember when the rain forests were at the centre of attention, and gradually they declined and other topics came up. It is very important that we should not miss them out. I have three more quick points.

First, we should remind ourselves that the importance of biodiversity has an additional dimension to the one to which my right hon. Friend referred. The retention of biodiversity is vital for the poor. The fish example is very strong. Rich countries steal the food of the poor. That is what happens. Local material becomes less and less available, so people look further and further abroad, and because they are rich enough they can grab a higher proportion of what is there. That is the injustice of the world, and it is crucial to those of us who recognise that social justice is at the heart of any policy to deal with climate change. We cannot deal with climate change without dealing with social justice, both nationally and internationally. Biodiversity is a key issue for social justice.

That leads to the second point, which is that we must have a degree of imagination and a willingness to extend the issues that are covered in the Bill more widely than is sometimes thought. I shall give an example. I am lucky enough to do business in Brazil and I recently returned from a conference there. One of the interesting issues raised was the work done by non-governmental organisations to provide jobs and opportunities for the indigenous people who would otherwise cut down the rain forests. It is all very well talking about cutting down rain forests, but it is often not wicked outsiders but poor people who do it, as part of the means to getting some sort of livelihood for themselves.

An excellent NGO is trying to help indigenous people to farm in a sustainable way. In doing so, they have found what is thought to be the original place where the cocoa bean comes from and are beginning to farm those original cocoa bean plantations in a way that will have a remarkably sustainable mechanism. They run into two kinds of problems. One is getting it started and teaching people; the other is being able to sell the high quality cocoa bean outside the area in which it exists, because the international organisers of such commodities do not like making the distinction between that special product and the generality of cocoa beans.

In order to meet the demands of my right hon. Friend’s proposals, we will have to look further. The matter should be talked through with the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform. It is the kind of issue that we should be thinking through when we deal with our overseas aid. It is a Foreign Office matter, as well as something that we do at home. I emphasise that a failure to look further might undermine the broad way in which the Bill should be applied.

Martin Horwood (Liberal Democrat, Cheltenham)

I agree with almost everything that the right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal said, in a valuable contribution. As chair of the all-party group for tribal peoples, I should say that although I am sure the organisation that he mentioned is doing valuable work, traditional tribal peoples in the rain forest live on a sustainable basis, do not damage the rain forest and are widely recognised as the best stewards of the forest. Protecting their land rights is an important contribution to the battle to protect biodiversity.

John Gummer (Conservative, Suffolk Coastal)

I agree. The traditional mechanisms of groups living in the rain forest are some of the things that we have done much to damage and have ignored and treated badly. I am merely saying that much of the damage done to rain forests is done by people who are poor and who do so because they have no other way to ensure that they and their family’s livelihoods are protected. Remembering our responsibility in that respect is important.

I know that the Minister will have been advised that all that is included in the Bill and that reference to biodiversity may well suggest that other things are less important, may upset the balance and so on. I think I know what has been written beautifully for her. I hope I am wrong, and if so I apologise. If I am right, I suggest to her that this is an opportunity for the Government to remind the nation that combating climate change is a much bigger business than merely the mathematics of targets, budgets and the like. It requires us to try to understand our world in a wholly different way.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border has reminded us that we have been unbelievably cavalier with the riches that we have inherited. The willingness to destroy without thought is a serious statement about humankind at this moment and over many centuries. Climate change is about reminding us that the human attitude to itself and its planet has to change radically. That was why I said during the previous sitting that this is the most exciting time for us to be living, because it is a time in which we have to become different about ourselves and each other in a way that we have not had to since the huge changes of the enlightenment and the renaissance.

I hope that the Minister will set aside any temporary, narrow or less than excellent proposals that she has from her civil servants and instead say that she will rise to this, because it is necessary to remind the nation and the world that biodiversity is so important as part of the fight against climate change because it represents the area in which we can see most dramatically where humankind has behaved at its worst and where the biggest changes have to take place.

Joan Ruddock (Labour, Lewisham, Deptford)

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr. Atkinson. First, I join in the general congratulations to the right hon. Member for Penrith and The Border on how he presented his case. The inspiration of Rio lives in him. He has given us a huge opportunity to remind everyone who hears the debate about the extraordinary importance of the world’s biodiversity. He did that not only because its intrinsic value and moral status, but for our self-interest. I think that if climate change affected only human beings, it would not be so dangerous. It is the fact that it affects the totality of the natural world that makes it such a terrible threat.

The right hon. Gentleman referred to the contribution of ecosystems and, especially, the contribution that the new natural world has made, through human discovery, to our medicines and thus our well-being. I join him in underlining that value. I will dwell a little on the threat for a few moments.

The Stern report revealed that an increase of just 1° C could lead to at least 10 per cent. of land species facing extinction, with 80 per cent. bleaching of the coral reefs, including the great barrier reef. Within the 2° C increase, which we have all pledged not to exceed, the extinction figure rises dramatically to between 15 and 40 per cent. We also know the enormous value of biodiversity in mitigating climate change. For example, the amount of terrestrial carbon stored in peat lands is equivalent to 75 per cent. of all atmospheric carbon and about 100 years of emissions from fossil fuels.

We recognise the link between biodiversity and climate change. We make a link in our efforts to tackle climate change and our efforts to tackle biodiversity loss. In a previous intervention, the right hon. Gentleman referred to “The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity”, which is an extremely important report, supported by the UK Government. We are also chairing a group of experts on biodiversity and climate change for the convention on biological diversity. At home we have established a climate change adaptation work stream, as part of the English biodiversity strategy, to promote adaptation of relevant policies and programmes in all relevant sectors, which include agriculture, forestry, water management and land-use planning.

The right hon. Gentleman’s amendments focus on the loss of the world’s forests, particularly rain forests. Again, I support his passion to see that sufficient attention is given to these terrible threats. Let me give him the further assurance that that goes for the whole Government.

The UK is working actively in the EU and with our international negotiating partners to reduce deforestation in developing countries by achieving a successful outcome to the UN climate negotiations. We have also recently allocated £50 million from the new £800 million environmental transformation fund to help to slow the rate of deforestation of the Congo basin. Let me make it absolutely clear that our overall aim is to reach international agreement on the use of the carbon market for the second commitment period under the Kyoto protocol to give positive incentives to reduce emissions from deforestation in developing countries.

So, why will I proceed in the way in which I am about to proceed? Let me say to the right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal that officials may indeed provide me with information and even speaking notes, but I speak for myself. I have given great attention to the amendments and great thought to the vision that he and others have presented here this afternoon. However, there are two issues that we need to look at very carefully. I am the Minister who is dealing with both the biodiversity and the garbage, and I hope that the right hon. Member for Penrith and The Border will not find me among the garbage at the end of what I am about to say.

There are two issues. First, the right hon. Member for Penrith and The Border seeks to add to clause 11(2)(a), which states:

“scientific knowledge about climate change”.

No one could possibly argue that

“scientific knowledge about climate change”

did not include knowledge of both the impacts of climate change on biodiversity and the way in which biodiversity might mitigate climate change. That is absolutely taken for granted; it is in every discussion and in every document. Therefore, I think that it is absolutely clear that that provision covers the issues that he has raised.

I must also say to the right hon. Gentleman, for the sake of accuracy—of course, this is all boring, technical stuff—that there are many causes of the loss of biodiversity that are not due to climate change. We could think, of course, of change in land use patterns, overgrazing, the introduction of alien species—that is a major factor that we agree might be exacerbated by climate change—and the over-abstraction of water.

Secondly, the amendments attempt to draw a direct line between the UK’s carbon budgets and the impacts of climate change on global biodiversity and forests. I am genuinely sorry to have to tell the right hon. Gentleman this, but I do not believe that that is sensible or even possible. As we have already discussed, the impacts of climate change will be driven by global emissions, not just emissions from the United Kingdom.

I hope that it will give the right hon. Gentleman some comfort if I say that there is undoubtedly a case for linking any future global climate change agreement to international biodiversity. That is why all the points that he has made are absolutely clear and valid. Indeed, at the conference looking at the convention on biological diversity that I attended last month, we decided to make closer linkages between that convention and the United Nations framework convention on climate change. Specifically, the conference agreed to highlight the role of biodiversity in mitigating climate change; to highlight the threats to global biodiversity from climate change; and to look for ways to minimise climate change. We also agreed to set up an expert group that would provide biodiversity-relevant information to the UNFCC.

Let me turn specifically to amendment No. 38. Clause 11 sets out matters that the Committee on Climate Change must take into account when providing advice on the level of carbon budgets, including economic, social and scientific factors. That will be a complex task that will require thorough analysis, advice and political judgement. I suggest to the right hon. Gentleman that it is not possible to take account of the effect of rising global temperatures on world biodiversity and forests when considering specific UK carbon budgets if that assessment is to be made in any meaningful way. That, of course, should not diminish the right hon. Gentleman’s vision, and it does not diminish the fact that it is precisely because of the potentially devastating effects on global biodiversity that we want to make our contribution to avoiding dangerous climate change and to limit the increase in average temperatures to no more than 2° C more than pre-industrial levels.

To the extent that there could be any linkage between the Committee on Climate Change and such work, hon. Members should be aware that, under the Natural Environment and Rural Communities Act 2006, all decisions that the Government take must have regard to the purpose of conserving biodiversity in the exercise of those functions.

Amendment No. 40 builds on amendment No. 38 by requiring an explanation of how proposals and policies to meet a budget will affect global temperature, the loss of world biodiversity and the loss of world forests. I have to say to the right hon. Gentleman that just as we cannot assess what effect the particular level of UK carbon budgeting would have on these issues, it is equally not possible to say what effect our particular choices of policies would have. We need to remember that all our proposals for emissions reductions have to be implemented within existing law. The right hon. Gentleman will know the extent of existing law covering biodiversity in this country.

While we cannot directly determine, or expect a link with, what happens overseas, we can expect that when we choose our new policies in the UK, they will have to respect the habitats and birds directives and the requirements for environmental impact assessments, where they apply. Clause 13 requires that proposals and policies contribute overall to sustainable development, which includes taking environmental impacts into account.

The hon. Member for Vale of York asked about the sustainable development definitions. The whole Government have adopted a definition for the sustainable development strategy, which says that a policy is sustainable when it is in line with all five of the sustainable development principles, one of which is the key to the hon. Lady’s question: “Living within environmental limits”. That is absolutely clear and the strategy says we must have policies in line with all five of those principles.

Nick Hurd (Conservative, Ruislip - Northwood)

I have no doubt about the Minister’s sincerity on this issue, as I have heard her talk about it before, but let me put it to her that as far as this is concerned, her advice is duff. Clause 11 says quite categorically that we put, as a society, a value on material prosperity and the economy because we have to take into account economic circumstances and the impact on the economy. However, when we are being presented with an opportunity to send a strong signal that we put a value on the natural resources on which that economy depends, we duck it.

Joan Ruddock (Labour, Lewisham, Deptford)

On the contrary. The case that I make is that the phrase that we have in the Bill about science entirely covers those points. All the science acknowledges these points. I have to return the hon. Gentleman to the nature of the amendments—this is a technical point—which are specifically asking us when setting budgets, which are just numbers, to take account of the effect that that might have on the world’s biodiversity and the world’s temperature rises. Clearly, I am sorry to say, I could use the same word—“duff”—about the amendments, but I shall say that they at least do not work.

David Maclean (Conservative, Penrith and The Border)

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for the kind and courteous way in which she is dealing with my amendments. While I accept that they might legally and technically be duff, given that in the places I have tried to insert the phrases “biodiversity” and “rain forest”, they may not actually work, will she accept the vision thing? She kindly said that in my speech I was making “a vision thing”. Does she not accept that somewhere in the Bill, with the Government’s excellent lawyers and civil service, they could put a bit of the vision thing in, using appropriate phraseology and at the appropriate place, to highlight the importance of rain forests and biodiversity?

Joan Ruddock (Labour, Lewisham, Deptford)

I think the right hon. Gentleman has enough parliamentary experience to know that we do not put such visions into Bills. We debated a preamble in a previous sitting. When great speeches come to be made, as they will as a consequence of the Bill becoming an Act of Parliament and all that will flow from that, including the reports that come in to Parliament, people will undoubtedly surround whatever they have to say of a technical nature with that vision, because nobody can doubt that that vision is why we are doing this. Why have the Government brought a Bill of this nature to Parliament? Because we understand that our whole planet is in great danger and we must make our contribution to dealing with it. However, as my hon. Friend the Minister for the Environment has had to say on several occasions, we deal with only what we have the possibility to control, and that is our own carbon emissions and the way in which we decide on them and report on them.

I shall dealing now with the new reporting requirement that the right hon. Member for Penrith and The Border would like to place upon us. We are in the business of reporting on UK biodiversity and I assure the Committee that there are regular reports. If hon. Members have not seen them, they should look for them, because they are comprehensive. The hon. Member for Cheltenham congratulated us on our UK biodiversity action plan. That is entirely transparent and a way in which people can follow the efforts that are being made to conserve UK biodiversity.

Regular reporting occurs and, in particular, DEFRA leads on the natural environment public service agreement, which includes targets for the Government’s approach to action on biodiversity. Progress against the PSA is, of course, published annually in the departmental annual report to Parliament. I suggest that any additional reporting requirement would be unnecessary in any case, but clearly would not work for this Bill.

To summarise, the Government’s view of the group of amendments is that scientific knowledge about climate change is wide enough to ensure that the matters raised by the right hon. Member for Penrith and The Border are taken into account in relation to carbon budgets, in so far as that is possible. The Government are deeply committed to promoting biodiversity in the UK and overseas. I meant to mention, but forgot, that the right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal referred to the need to link indigenous lifestyles with the conservation of biodiversity. I refer him to the Darwin initiative, for which he can take some credit, which has funded hundreds of projects in developing countries where we are doing precisely that. I am glad to say that I recently launched a new round of funding for that so that we can help developing countries with our scientific expertise, particularly on climate change and the way in which lifestyles need not threaten biodiversity and we can all work together.

I do not believe that the amendments would add value to the Government’s existing reporting to Parliament on biodiversity and I do not believe there is a meaningful causal relationship between the UK’s carbon budgets, or our policies to meet them, and the level of global temperatures and loss of international biodiversity. I tell the right hon. Member for Penrith and The Border that I therefore cannot accept the amendment.

David Maclean (Conservative, Penrith and The Border)

I am grateful to the Minister for her kind and courteous reply. She said at a couple of points in her response that of course it is implicit in considering “scientific knowledge” that loss of biodiversity, the rain forest and other matters will be taken into account. She said that it would be inconceivable to consider new scientific knowledge without considering those matters. I accept that, but she said towards the end that, as far as was possible, the Government would take loss of biodiversity into account. She says, and I accept, that the Government would not wish to set a target for the United Kingdom based on what was happening in the Amazonian rain forest or in Papua New Guinea.

I had no intention of seeking to tie British policy to things of which the Government are not in charge. It would be utterly wrong to attempt in any way to tie the Government’s hands by including a legal obligation in respect of rain forests and biodiversity, and therefore requiring a carbon target to be set for the United Kingdom on matters that are way outside the Government’s control. I was seeking to incorporate a little bit of vision in the Bill because I think that it lacks it.

One of the reasons why we are here is because people have a vision of the disastrous consequences of climate change if it goes unchecked. I was merely seeking—in a technically inadequate way, I know—to introduce some concepts that the Minister says are already implicit in the reporting mechanism. I would merely wish the Minister and her civil servants to think again. Are there ways to flag up the two phrases, perhaps in a reporting mechanism—possibly not a reporting mechanism on carbon budgets, but elsewhere in the Bill—in addition to all the current reporting that the Government may do, and in addition to any other report laid before Parliament? Is it possible to include somewhere in this Bill—the most important one for a generation—on climate change and saving the planet phrases about the loss of biodiversity and rain forests, or preservation of biodiversity and rain forests?

The Minister is right. No doubt when politicians make great speeches in the future, they will talk about biodiversity and rain forests, not just 60 and 80 per cent. targets. However, I am afraid that when my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle is sitting in the Department as the Minister of State, possibly in a couple of years’ time, and he goes off to make a major speech, he will want to talk about biodiversity and rain forests but his officials will say, “No, Minister. You must stick to the terms of the Bill, which is all about climate change. We have a very exciting speech here for the UN about 20 per cent. targets,” or 80 or 60 per cent. targets. That might be fanciful and it might not happen—it is fanciful that my hon. Friend would accept the advice, because I am sure that he would not.

The Minister and hon. Members sitting with her can tell from what I have been saying that I have no intention of putting wrecking provisions into the Bill, or of including provisions that are impossible to achieve, or meaningless legally or technically. I do not wish to press the amendment to a Division because that would be against the spirit of consensus—we are almost in agreement on this—but I hope that the Minister will think again and try to find a way of coming back on Report with a proposal to include in the Bill an obligation to talk about the things that she says are implicit in it.

I am sorry if my colleagues are disappointed that I will not press the amendment to a Division, but I suspect that I would not win and I would not win for the wrong reasons. I might anger the Minister such that she does not come back on another occasion with an amendment that is not duff, so I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.